Educating the Market to Grow Product Momentum

This company (eventually acquired by Avocent) was providing a standards-based (IPMI) embedded network management solution within servers that was little known and wanted to change the game, a necessary step to drive market adoption of their solution. At the start of the program, there was just a 5-10% market adoption of the standard in OEM server solutions.

The goal was to convince the server industry ecosystem of the viability of the standard and then have them adopt this company’s firmware solution instead of opting to build it in-house. Market messaging needed to be at the semiconductor and the OEM level. A further effort was a pull campaign with IT management whereby we would position the need for IT management to also adopt use of the standard. This would help further convince OEMs to make the standardized embedded management tool a part of their offering.

On-Going Efforts

Continual PR efforts were needed to convince the market of the company’s solution – adopt the standard and then buy it from the company instead of building it in-house. A two-pronged push-pull strategy was used – convince OEMs of the value of the standard and convince IT managers of the power and cost-effectiveness of using it. To start the process of growing demand, media and analysts were engaged. Hundreds of stories resulted and many in leading publications such as, EE Times; Network World; Network Magazine; ServerWatch; etc.

Contributed articles were also placed in strategic publications such as CommsDesign; Computer Technology Review; Disaster Recovery Journal; etc. Analysts also routinely mentioned the company’s solution in research papers, presentations given at events, etc. as an important part of an overall IT management strategy. Notable mentions came from research firms such as, Gartner; IDC; IMEX Research, etc.

Results

After two years, market adoption grew from just below 10% to 70% with almost the entire server ecosystem opting to buy the company’s solution versus building it internally. After 3-4 years, market adoption hit more than 90% and in between, the company was acquired for $100M by Avocent.

Go to case study 5.