Program Overview
In connection with VMware’s provision of participating on-premise products, as set forth in the Customer Experience Improvement Program Product Table VMware collects technical information about our customer's use of such products for the purposes set forth below, such as to improve VMware products and services, and advise our customers on how best to deploy and use our products and services. The data collected through this Customer Experience Improvement Program (“CEIP”) is separate from the configuration, performance, usage, and consumption data that we collect and use to facilitate delivery of our products and services (such as tracking entitlements, providing infrastructure related support, monitoring the performance, integrity and stability of the infrastructure, and preventing or addressing service or technical issues) (“Operational Data”).
VMware has two levels of participation, Standard and Enhanced, under the Customer Experience Improvement Program. Additional data is collected under the Enhanced participation level, as noted below, enabling VMware to provide better support, both proactively and reactively. Generally, the customer can choose in which level to participate.
The products that participate in the Customer Experience Improvement Program are set forth at https://www.vmware.com/solutions/trustvmware/ceip-products.html
Types of Data Collected under the Customer Experience Improvement Program
For customers participating in the Customer Experience Improvement Program, VMware regularly collects technical information about your organization’s use of our products in association with your organization’s VMware license key(s). Depending on the nature of the product, and whether the product offers Standard and/or Enhanced participation levels, the technical information collected consists of all or any of the following data:
Configuration Data
Technical data about how a customer's organization has configured VMware products and related environment information. Examples include version information, configuration settings and technical data relating to the devices accessing those products or third party applications or systems used in connection with the VMware product.
Feature Usage Data
Data about how a customer organization uses the VMware product. Examples include details about which features the customer organization uses and metrics of user interface activity.
Performance Data
Data about the performance of VMware products. Examples include metrics of the performance and scale of VMware products, response times for user interfaces, and details about customer API calls.
Product Logs
These are logs that are generated during the active deployment of VMware products. Typically, product logs record systems events and state during product operations in a semi-structured or unstructured form. This data is only collected under the Enhanced participation level.
Such information is collected in association with customer identifying information (e.g. customer assigned license key(s), customer IDs, and entitlement account numbers relating to the customer) via a variety of automated means. Limited personal data may be collected, depending on the product and level of participation (Standard or Enhanced). Typically, this personal data only identifies the Customer IT administrator who operates the product for the customer. Customers should not enter personal data or sensitive personal data (or any other information that may allow an individual to be identified) when naming systems such as their hosts, VMs, or dashboards. To the extent we collect personal data, we will process it in accordance with our Privacy and Service Notices.
Uses of Product Usage Data
The purposes for which VMware uses the data collected through the Customer Experience Improvement Program at both the Standard and Enhanced participation levels is as follows:
- Recommendations – VMware uses information to make recommendations to our customers regarding how best to use the product and recommendations to a specific customer to improve the health of the deployed product.
- Product Improvement – VMware uses information to improve the products we offer to our customers such as:
- To detect and fix bugs in the products and understand product improvement opportunities.
- To help prioritize future product roadmap features.
- To analyze use of products and features across the customer base.
- To improve support request resolution.
- To prioritize the order in which certain configurations or features of the product should be tested.
- To improve the product based on usage patterns across on-premise and hosted service offerings (e.g. comparison of the same components’ performance and errors on-premise versus a hosted offering for best practices implementation).
- To make pricing and packaging decisions (e.g. add/modify SKUs based on usage patterns).
- Customer Insights – VMware uses information to better understand how our customers use VMware products, such as:
- To understand the financial impact of Net Provider Score and usage behaviors.
- To create a 360 view of a customer across sales/marketing/support/usage and create enriched customer profiles for a better understanding of a customer in order to provide improved customer engagement, and to analyze customer interactions with VMware.
- To create advanced analytical models and business intelligence reports and dashboards to generate insights for VMware at a customer or product level (and not at an individual user level).
- To benchmark or assess the product across customers and specific customer industries.
- Customer Support – VMware uses information to provide proactive and reactive support to our customer regarding their use of the products such as:
- To provide support recommendations to our customers to improve the general health of a customer’s use of the product.
- To understand a customer’s product configuration, events and issues in order to resolve a specific support request.
- To understand a customer’s product configuration, events and issues in order to improve how VMware support resolves an issue.
- To help customers use our products and offerings in more effective ways.
- Marketing & Sales – VMware may contact Customer account representatives and/or Customer IT Administrators to let our existing customers know about additional products that may be of relevance to them and to inform sales conversations.
We may combine the data we collect under this Customer Experience Improvement Program with data that we have collected about our customers in connection with a customer’s account and other VMware data collection programs (subject to any usage limitations on combining imposed by those programs).
VMware may update this information from time to time to reflect changes in our products, the Customer Experience Improvement Program and data collected and use practice. We encourage you to periodically review this Web page to keep informed.