Flash Memory Summit 2013 Session: Differentiate or Die – Marketing Flash-Based Storage Systems

I am delighted to be chairing what may be the first ever marketing-oriented session at the annual Flash Memory Summit in August 2013. A lively panel of experts, editors, and analysts will be discussing product differentiation in a growth market in a session called: Differentiate or Die – Marketing Flash-Based Storage Systems on Wednesday, August 14, 9:50-10:50 am. This is an Open Session so you can register for free up until 8/11/13.

Product differentiation is a strategically important topic for businesses who develop products using using flash memory. It’s important because there are many ways to position such products, competition is fierce, and the process of positioning (or repositioning) is difficult, costly, and time consuming. To succeed, these flash-based products must appeal to as many customers as possible. They must also appeal to the press, analysts, and investors.

Are these constituencies looking for the same things? Are they still responding to technology underpinnings such as SLC or MLC, or benchmarks such as latency and IOPS?  Do they focus on features such as on-the-fly de-dupe, reliability and price, or are they more responsive to benefits such as TCO and ROI? Or, are they looking to solve problems with Big Data, cloud, databases, and virtualization?  And in the end, do any of these details matter more than the brand name on the box? These are the strategic questions that a panel of experts, journalists, and analysts will address at this session.

This work-in-progress post has all the latest details and sometime before the event I’ll add a primer on differentiation strategy. You can follow this blog by signing up on the left. You can suggest questions and discussion topics using the comment box below or by sending me an email at blog [at] marketingsage.net

About the Author

David X. Lamont is an accomplished marketer of IT products and a partner at Marketingsage, a PR and lead generation firm that specializes in marketing data storage, data management, and enterprise software products. He can be reached by email at blog [at] marketingsage.net. Fellow marketers and IT professionals are invited to join his network on LinkedIn and to subscribe to this blog (see sidebar).

Does Dell Buyout put Storage and Data Protection Business Up for Grabs?

We’ve all been duly awed by the Dell buyout announcement. Over the years, the company has amassed quite a portfolio of storage and data protection and management offerings, having acquired companies such as EqualLogic, Compellent, Quest, AppAssure and SonicWall. Although many of these acquisitions brought robust technology and contributed handily to Dell’s revenue, the company never made the transition to becoming a storage company. This begs the question as to what will now happen to these lines as Dell sharpens its focus and remakes itself into a seller of products rather than an architect of share valuations. Only the most naïve amongst us harbors any ideas that the latest chapter in Dell’s story might lead to storage innovation and a bid for leadership in the space.

Only 3% of Dell’s revenue is from storage, with software and peripherals yielding 16%, of which data protection software is a part. The overall business distribution is more even with 30% of net revenue coming from large enterprise, 20% from consumer and 25% each from SMB and public sector organizations.

Anecdotally, Dell does not exercise the kind of account control as players such as EMC, IBM, Oracle, or Cisco.

HP has not been shy in making generalized predatory rumblings about picking over Dell’s portfolio, and I suspect Dell is a subject of strategic debate in many more functional boardrooms too. Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall over at EMC and NetApp? These storage giants, along with the myriad of smaller storage and data protection vendors, are no doubt strategizing furiously about how to woo customers and key talent away.

On the face of things, storage and data protection represent relatively small, albeit growing, potatoes to Dell. But in the highly competitive mid-tier storage market, these potatoes undoubtedly look mighty appetizing. Dell will need to make big moves quickly if it’s going to keep control of its pricey ($24.5 billion) lunch. In any case, the storage market is sure to heat up over the coming months.

About the Author

Agnes Lamont is an accomplished marketer of IT products and a partner at Marketingsage, a PR and lead generation firm that specializes in marketing data storage, data management, security, and enterprise software products. She can be reached by email at blog [at] marketingsage.net. Fellow marketers and IT professionals are invited to join her network on LinkedIn and to subscribe to this blog (see sidebar).

Don’t Like Mondays (or Tuesdays, Wednesdays…)? IT and marketing among the 10 most hated jobs according to a CareerBliss survey

Of all the horrible jobs to have, it seems that marketing and IT are the worst.  CareerBliss recently surveyed thousands of people and identified the 10 jobs with the highest levels of employee unhappiness. I expected to see yucky and dangerous jobs on the list: rodent abatement; sewer maintenance; oil rig diving and the like. So imagine my surprise when I saw the list populated with many of the roles I’ve played and been close to in my own clean and happy little world! Here’s the list:

1. Director of Information Technology (“nepotism, cronyism, disrespect for workers”)

2. Director of Sales and Marketing (“lack of direction from upper management and an absence of room for growth”)

3. Product Manager (“the work is boring and there’s a lot of clerical work”)

4. Senior Web Developer (“employers are unable to communicate coherently, and lack an understanding of the technology”)

5. Technical Specialist (“treated with a palpable level of disrespect, lack of communication from upper management, and input was not taken seriously)

6. Electronics Technician (“too little control, work schedule, lack of accomplishment, no real opportunity for growth, peers have no motivation to work hard, no say in how things are done, hostility from peers towards other employees”)

7. Law Clerk (“hours are long and grueling, and the clerk is subject to the whims of sometimes mercurial personalities, a median salary of $39,780)

8. Technical Support Analyst (“may be required to travel at a moment’s notice, sometimes on holidays or weekends”, and “You can do better, really.”)

9. CNC Machinist (“no room for advancement”)

10. Marketing Manager (“lack of direction”, “tolerable,” “It’s a job.”)

Life as a marketing agency partner is great and I love it. Admittedly I work in a non-political environment with smart and funny people who have the grace to always refill the coffee pot. But I’ve also held jobs and roles equivalent to numbers 1, 2, 3, and 10 on the list and worked very closely with 4, 5, 6, and 8 in the corporate world for more years than I care to admit. Honestly, I was happy and I thought my colleagues were too (except for the disgruntled guy with the guns in tech support who shall remain nameless).

“I Don’t Like Mondays” YouTube track by the Boomtown Rats

I’ve always been excited by technology, software innovation, the magic that makes the internet and my printers work (I’m not a complete geek). The scar where I cut myself pulling cables under the data center floor healed, so the IT part was good. As a product manager I treated my products as children – nurturing them, advocating for them, trying to get them out the door on time with enough features to form a covering fabric of modesty. Practicing marketing is a passion and I have always been as happy as Larry the Cable Guy to “Git ‘r done” – default direction is to find folks and sell stuff.

Truly I am baffled that, of all the things that can make human beings unhappy, my career path accounts for so much of it in the workplace. The article by Daniel Burkszpan at CNBC is definitely worth a read and I’d love to hear your views on what makes a great and lousy job in technology marketing. By the way, chocolate makes everything seem better!

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/113308/10-most-hated-jobs-cnbc

http://www.cnbc.com/id/44038159?slide=1

About the Author

Agnes Lamont is an accomplished marketer of IT products and a partner at Marketingsage, a PR and lead generation firm that specializes in marketing data storage, data management and enterprise software products. She can be reached by email at blog [at] marketingsage.net. Fellow marketers and IT professionals are invited to join her network on LinkedIn and to subscribe to this blog (see sidebar).

Are EMC, IBM, NetApp, HP and Hitachi the Only Vendors at the Storage Party?

IDC has just released its Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker for Q2 2011. The shipment of 5,353 petabytes in total disk storage systems capacity for the quarter represents a 10.2% increase in Q2 revenues compared to Q2 2010. Only Dell and the many hundreds of “Others” saw a decline in revenue.

It’s cheering to see some tangible evidence of prosperity and an uptick in IT spending. However, it behooves not only Dell and Oracle (Sun), but the smaller, emerging companies in the storage arena to pause and think strategically about how they can compete against EMC, IBM, NetApp, HP and Hitachi who jointly won 74% of the market in 2Q11.

Technical innovation is only a partial answer. When considering access to market, the conundrum is whether to try to beat them or join them.

Top 5 Vendors, Worldwide External Disk Storage Systems Factory Revenue, Second Quarter of 2011 (Revenues are in Millions)

Vendor	2Q11 Revenue	2Q11 Market Share	2Q10 Revenue	2Q10 Market Share	2Q11/2Q10 Revenue Growth
1. EMC	$1,621	28.7%	$1,287	25.6%	26.0%
T2. IBM	$771	13.7%	$680	13.5%	13.4%
T2. NetApp	$720	12.8%	$572	11.4%	25.7%
4. HP	$619	11.0%	$567	11.3%	9.1%
T5. Hitachi	$459	8.1%	$372	7.4%	23.3%
T5. Dell	$444	7.9%	$472	9.4%	-5.9%
Others	$1,009	17.9%	$1,080	21.5%	-6.6%
All Vendors	$5,643	100.0%	$5,031	100.0%	12.2%

Source: IDC Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker, September 2, 2011

Press release: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23012911

Report: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=IDC_P4435

About the Author

Agnes Lamont is an accomplished marketer of IT products and a partner at Marketingsage, a PR and lead generation firm that specializes in marketing data storage, data management and enterprise software products. She can be reached by email at blog [at] marketingsage.net. Fellow marketers and IT professionals are invited to join her network on LinkedIn and to subscribe to this blog (see sidebar).

Ensuring Early Success for Emerging IT Start-ups – Marketingsage “Countdown” to Launch

In Scott Shane’s book “The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By,” there’s a chart showing data the four-year survival rate for technology businesses at 38% – poor compared to other industries. Given the competitive and fast-paced nature of technology, that’s not too shocking. Great ideas and great people are not enough to ensure success. Time is, as they say, money.

Marketing cannot wait until the product is ready to ship. Although resources in the typical emerging company are constrained, and it may be premature to staff and build a full department, some aspects of product, channel, and communications marketing are crucial to early success. How else do you get the early customers, partners and capital on board and launch successfully? At Marketingsage, we see this gap between marketing needs and capabilities as an opportunity to affordably deliver a new and valuable service that we have named “Countdown” specifically for start-ups in the pre-launch phase.

Prior to launch, emerging IT companies frequently grapple with meaningful positioning for their company and product offering in the market, creating critical sales tools such as white papers, videos, case studies, training material, web content, prospect lists, beta programs and reseller programs. They struggle to generate influential pre-launch “buzz” among investors, analysts, journalists and business partners. Key to overcoming these challenges is combining deep product and market knowledge with a complete array of marketing services.

Too often, consultants can only advise on strategy and content, but can’t produce the actual materials, effectively increasing their client’s workload. Typical PR and creative agencies can’t create content from the ground up, articulate meaningful differentiation, nor create detailed prospect profiles because they don’t have the necessary depth of product and market knowledge. Working with multiple specialists and agencies is not only unwieldy, but far too expensive for a start-up who may be facing the imminent prospect of raising venture capital.

Here at Marketingsage we have deep corporate roots in data storage, data management and security products targeting enterprise and government customers through direct, reseller and/or OEM sales channels.  That makes it possible for us to combine the requisite depth of product and market knowledge with our full and integrated array of marketing and PR services and help ensure successful launches, while reducing the capital and time required by up to 50%.

Sorry if this all sounds a lot like a commercial, but I am really excited at how we have organized our capabilities to serve early-stage companies and promote the quest for TNBT (The Next Big Thing). More about Countdown at http://www.marketingsage.com/aboutsage-prelaunch.html

About the Author

Agnes Lamont is an accomplished marketer of IT products and a partner at Marketingsage, a PR and lead generation firm that specializes in marketing data storage, data management and enterprise software products. She can be reached by email at blog [at] marketingsage.net. Fellow marketers and IT professionals are invited to join her network on LinkedIn and to subscribe to this blog (see sidebar).