MarkLogic Customer Responses to the Coronavirus Pandemic

Like many others around the world, we at MarkLogic have primarily been working from our home offices (and living rooms, and kitchens, and dining rooms, etc.) for the past few weeks.

Thankfully, while it’s certainly a bit of an adjustment, we already had the technology we needed to support the shift. I wondered how our customers were doing, and thought I’d check in with our Customer Success Management (CSM) team members to see how our customers are coping with the global pandemic, and what if anything has changed about their business focus – and use of MarkLogic – in the current situation.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the CSM team, they’re led by James Wonder, an eight-year veteran of MarkLogic who was also a customer of ours for seven years before joining the company. The CSM team’s mission is to help our current customers get the most out of the MarkLogic investment they’ve already made. They do this by sharing information about how other organizations are using the product, monitoring support tickets, and generally providing advice about best practices and available resources. This service is available at no cost, and team members are located in both the US and Europe.

Coping with the “new normal”

I was interested to hear that for most of our customers, it’s close to “business as usual” right now. Our customers are mostly large global enterprises (and government agencies) providing valuable services and products – and they remain focused on their missions despite current challenges.

Certainly working remotely is a cultural shift for many, and there’s been an adjustment period. The current situation also has some companies thinking about their business continuity plans in a new light, and checking in with us with questions related to disaster recovery with their MarkLogic-based systems (thankfully we could assure them that all is fine on that front!).

Media and Publishing companies rising to the challenge

Some of our customers in Media and Publishing produce and deliver content that is very relevant to this crisis, and they are rising to the occasion. For example:

• Education publishers such as Wiley, Pearson, and Scholastic are providing instructional material for students and are experiencing increased demand for online distance learning.
• Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) publishers – like CAS (Chemical Abstracts Service), Cambridge University Press, Macmillan, Oxford University Press, Proquest, Springer Nature, and Wolters Kluwer just to name a few – are making relevant content available (some at no charge) to help in the fight to combat coronavirus (fortunately, MarkLogic makes this easy to implement from a rights management perspective).

Following on from the “International Publishers Day” event held on March 4, our customers in the industry are also continuing to reach out to MarkLogic and to each other to exchange ideas on common challenges and solutions. The event brought together representatives from dozens of different publishing and provider organizations, in three locations and online via WebEx, and got rave reviews from attendees – one commented, “We learned so much and met people we had not known. I took so many notes and names down. It was great!”

If you’d like to join the conversation and hear about future events (online-only for now!), sign up for our LinkedIn group. Some of the presentations from the March event have been posted to this group.

Advice from the CSM team

Our CSM team members told me that customers are already asking us about things like practical uses of semantics, and how new MarkLogic capabilities and product offerings (like Data Hub Service) can help their business. They also had some advice on how people can spend their time wisely during this pandemic, in order to help their businesses through this challenge and future crises:

• Take advantage of opportunities for professional development. There’s a lot of free training available online – from MarkLogic University and elsewhere – to help you improve your skills or learn new ones. One area they specifically recommended exploring was using low-code and no-code tools such as our Data Hub Software and an interesting solution to Create Custom Steps Without Writing Code with Pipes.
• MarkLogic customers can reach out to the CSM team – or the account executives and consultants you may already be working with – to get specific advice on reaching your goals. We can help you with:
  • Tips on enhancing your current MarkLogic deployment
  • Recommendations on new use cases you may be considering
  • Introductions to other MarkLogic community members (customers and partners) who can provide useful information or services

Useful links

• Free self-paced and instructor-led online training from MarkLogic University
• Contact the Customer Success Management team
• Register for one of our live demos to see MarkLogic Data Hub Service in action
• Explore MarkLogic customer use cases