This is the first article in a continuing series that will feature case studies and anecdotal stories from entrepreneurs, consultants and veteran marketers about their efforts to develop, implement and measure marketing programs to bring technology to market and grow market share. We invite your feedback.
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
Last month, BlueArc Corp., a 13-year-old maker of network storage systems based in California, was acquired by Hitachi Data Systems for a reported $600 million.
BlueArc’s business was networked attached storage (NAS), the kind of high-end storage system for managing unstructured data — files, spreadsheets, digital content and images — in high-performance computing applications. However, the company struggled for years to achieve profitability despite periods of strong revenue growth.
“BlueArc, while it had received funding somewhere north of $200 million, couldn’t dominate the NAS market on its own. It needed a partner. With the acquisition by Hitachi and its intellectual property girth, it has nailed that market down,” InformationWeek’s Deni Connor wrote shortly after the deal was announced.
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By Alexandra Reid
Mark Zuckerberg rocked the Facebook boat again last week when he introduced a handful of new features that received mixed reactions from the site’s 750 million users.
From expressions of excitement to confusion to outright hatred on blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, as well as mainstream media such as the BBC, it’s clear that Facebook users have become increasingly more vocal with their opinions of the free site. This PCWorld article reveals a number of immediate user reactions to Facebook’s new features, from the blunt and judgmental, “Sucks,” to the pessimistically speculative, “Wonder what is going to replace Facebook,” which suggests that these new features may be just the provocation Google Plus needed to transition users to its platform. But then again, who’s to say Google won’t turn the product in radical new directions in another year, as The Guardian’s Dan Gillmor asked in his intriguing post. It isn’t all bad though, as one individual, who was featured on MacWorld, tweeted “It’s the ‘Facebook cycle’ – things change, people complain, they get over it and carry on.”
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This is the first article in a continuing monthly series that will chronicle the growth path of CommentAir Technologies, a startup based in Ottawa, Canada. CommentAir is developing a wireless technology fans can use at sports venues to receive the same real-time commentary as fans watching from their televisions, a wireless technology that also creates a platform for targeted consumer interaction. We invite your feedback.
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
Siblings Katie and Luke Hrycak are in that category of entrepreneurs who could be called reluctant innovators. They found themselves in the midst of a problem they felt compelled to solve.
That problem was the quality of the experience in attending a major sporting event live versus watching it on television. They both found themselves dissatisfied with the experience of attending NHL games and UFC matches. Why? Because fans at the event can’t hear the live commentary.
“The question became ‘Why don’t fans have the commentary at the game?’” said Luke. “Can’t we combine both the audio and visual experience of sports? We believed that fans want and need a special feature that will enhance whichever sport they enjoy most.”
But neither Katie nor Luke had an engineering background. They were starting at zero in terms of having a product design, startup capital and any kind of market validation beyond their own fan experience and that of their friends.
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By Francis Moran
Following so soon after a recent post that declared, “Your customers aren’t werewolves; stop looking for a marketing silver bullet,” today’s title might suggest that I am stranded in a double feature at the marketing equivalent of a b-movie drive-in. Not exactly, but I was at a trade show last week that had me wondering whether trade shows aren’t marketing’s undead, soulless ghouls that suck the life out of budgets and contaminate sales funnels with lousy leads.
It was the third trade show I attended on behalf of various clients this year. The first one, in January, was that orgy of geeks and gadgets called the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It was followed closely by the National Retail Federation’s very serious Big Show in New York. These two shows may well be chalk and cheese compared one to the other, but if either is a zombie, someone forgot to tell them how to behave. Both were packed with industry experts, thousands of exhibitors, huge international delegations and masses of clearly alive and lively attendees. No George A. Romero production here.
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This is the next contribution to this blog by Associate Andrew Penny, an Ottawa-based business development and market strategist for B2B companies, and president of Kingsford Consulting Ltd. We welcome your comments.
By Andrew Penny
Since the first acts of commerce, the seller has always had the upper hand with respect to product knowledge, performance, service, costs, and all the other factors that a buyer wants to know. Today, your buyer has access to all that information before they even meet you. In a few seconds they can find out where your president went to school, what your customers think of you, how you manufacture your product, what your approximate costs are (or should be), how the product works and if any other firms like theirs have bought it. A push (not to say pushy) salesperson doesn’t stand a chance.
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By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
