KJR Associates Year End Update

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

2010 has been an incredible year in technology and for KJR Associates. I've been blessed with AMAZING clients, GREAT projects and SPECTACULAR colleagues and partners. It's been a thrill to help my clients accelerate and grow their go to market initiatives and valuations.

Some of the highlights of 2010 for KJR Associates were:

1) Client Nimsoft Acquired by CA for $350M - Read all about this story here.

2) I moved offices sharing with a great new colleague Kate Healy of Healy Consultants. Our new space is private, comfortable, and really productive.

3) I joined two boards, the Advisory board of my client Eccentex and the Encinal School Site Council, my first "pro-bono" role. Look for great things from Eccentex as they disrupt a multi-billion $ Case Management market with their -AAS offering.

4) I entered a formal partnership with Opsource. KJR is offering its ISV SaaS GTM Transformation Service in partnership with Opsource, and I expect this to be a very fruitful relationship.

5) I added a v. large networking company to my client list, and was thrilled to find a great fit working for a giant as well as smaller and mid size B2B technology vendors.


2011 promises more excitement, as the Cloud continues to transform Enterprise computing, and KJR helps its clients to position and execute for growth and share. One exciting event on the near horizon is a panel that I am moderating on Cloud Go To Market Strategy at the Silicon Valley Cloud Computing Meetup on Jan 18 in Mountain View. Gary Read, CEO of Nimsoft, Jon Beck of Opsource and Sam Boonin of GoodData are the panelist. Sign up here!

Throughout the year, I've reconnected with old colleagues and met new. I'd love to keep that trend up in 2011 so drop me a line if you'd like to grab a coffee or a drink, either to catch up or discuss how KJR might help you, your portfolio or your clients.


Finally, I wish all of you and yours a healthy, prosperous and fulfilling 2011. Cheers and I'll see you in the "Cloud".

Cheers
Ken

Polar Opposites? Why Product Marketing and Product Management Must Engage...

I've been watching with much interest the lively conversation on Product Mgmt V. Product Marketing on the 280 Linked in group. And while I do plan on linking in (yes, pun intended) this blog to that discussion, I think the general sentiment raises a big set of questions for Sr mktg and engineering executives.

For if, as the consensus goes, Product Management is "Inbound", from customer need to product delivery and Product Marketing is "Outbound" from product Delivery to customer purchase, whick is a logical starting point, why do so many organization struggle with:

1) Under-performance of one or both functions
2) Fighting between the functions
3) Turnover and lack of visionary leadership in product delivery AND go to market...

Though there are doubtless a LOT of issues here, I think the very first goes back to this consensus definition of the two roles. This conventional wisdom often leads to what I call a regression to the poles in both roles. Let's look at what happens when each of these species when they regress to their poles:

The Regressed Product Manager - or the Engineering Program Manager in disguise.

• When a product manager gets myopic inbound vision, they quickly become little more than engineering program manager, which while a necessary role, isn't what he/she is paid to do
• While the next release will be on time, if often won't be right
• When the product COGs get's too high to support a market price, the features will still get delivered.
• When the field says they need X, the first answer will always start with the schedule
• Even in Agile environments, the focus is on releases and dates, install base commits and legacy markets
• Innovation is never the result

The Regressed Product Marketer - or the Marketing Program Manager in disguise

• When a product marketer gets myopic outbound, they quickly become little more than Marketing Program manager, which while a often necessary role, isn't what he/she is paid to do
• While the next collateral piece may be on time, it often won't be unique and powerful
• When the product's price is established, it will often leave value on the table, after all, sales says we are too expensive!
• When the field says they need X, the question won't get answered well
• Even in Sales driven environments, the focus is on price and features, not value!
• Innovation is never the result

So what I call for is a new, holistic view of these roles. There is NO distinction in today's market between inbound and outbound. And while I am NOT advocating for merging these roles, I am advocating for convergence to the whole.

Whole product managers have a CLEAR understanding of market dynamics, messaging, positioning and channels. Whole product marketers have a CLEAR understanding of the technology, the features, the engineering constaints and trade-offs, etc. Innovation comes when great customer and understanding MEETS and EMBRACES engineering constraints and possibilities. GREAT teams meet in the middle every day, NOT just at MRD review meetings...

Thoughts? I'd love to hear yours...

I declare the Whitepaper Dead! RIP YAWNERS!

I have blogged in the past about YAWNERS, Yet Another Whitepaper Nobody Ever Reads, and today, I want to go another step further and declare the whitepaper dead!

Why? Simply because we don't need to settle for generic, one size fits all content anymore. Customer have always wanted more, they've always said, "Hey, but what about me?"
Well, the great news is that we can now deliver technical marketing materials that are:

1) Relevant
2) Customized
3) Meaningful

Not only is this great for the customer, it provides our sales-teams with prequalified leads, and the knowledge to engage the prospect in a MUCH more meaningful and successful conversation.

Today, Nimsoft launched a great example with their new Nimsoft Cloud Readiness Assessment, a simple 5 minute online tool that delivers a customized PDF to the prospect minutes after completion. This allows Nimsoft to educate their potential clients by tailoring this deliverable to the specific situation of the client. Wow!

Here's another great example from FireEye, an innovator in Next Generation Malware Protection. Like the Nimsoft example, this allows both the prospect and the vendor to zero in on areas of need where there may be a fit.

These innovative programs are a sign-post of the future, a future of engaging content, tailored to the B2B buyers need. Wow, doesn't that sound cool. Whitepaper YAWNERs- RIP

Hybrid Service Delivery, 2 yrs later...

I posted this vision piece 2 yrs ago. I still think we are a ways from realizing this vision, but I think it still rings true....

Thoughts?

http://www.zdnet.com/news/new-hybrid-delivery-security-architecture/211127

“In the past, CIOs deployed their own self-contained application architectures on their own servers and storage systems. This old model is giving way to a hybrid application architecture that combines hosted functionality with in-house applications running on consolidated and virtualized commodity servers. We believe that this transformation will drive efficiencies across the full stack, from business processes to physical infrastructure, while increasing IT's ability to meet new demands in a rapidly changing business environment.” - Kishore Kanakamedala, Vasantha Krishnakanthan, and Roger Roberts, McKinsey Quarterly, 1
Commentary--Software as a Service (SaaS), virtualization and integrated IT appliances are creating new and powerful service delivery models for IT managers to leverage. One only needs to look at the success of SaaS companies such as Salesforce.com and WebEx, the robust growth of integrated appliances in spaces ranging from security to data warehousing, and the meteoric rise of VMware’s adoption in the enterprise to see that all these models deliver significant “utility-like” benefits and cost savings.....

Built to Last Programs - Great marketing has legs

Quick note...when I was at Actional, I wrote a whitepaper and built a model on Web Services Management ROI that was used for 5 yrs!!! Good content has long shelflife.

At Secure Computing, we launched the SWAT initiative in 2008. This week, McAfee (#mfe) updated the Forrester Research and the core Whitepaper behind this initiative.

Lessons:

1. Do less, but make it impactful
2. Great content has longer than expected shelf life
3. Great content focuses on the customer's needs and challenges
4. Market ahead of the curve (Web 2.0 in 2008) and the market will come to you, creating leverage...

Over and out!
Ken

451 Recognizes Nimsoft's innovative go to market

Nice article from 451 today. You can read it in it's entirety on Gary Read's blog here.

Here's a couple of great quotes:

"In any case, it seems clear that innovation and aggressive channel and product marketing will continue to be hallmarks of Nimsoft’s business strategy going forward. "

and

First came the April release of the Nimsoft On Demand IT management SaaS offering...July brought usage metering that reports on actual usage to facilitate a pay-as-you-go business model across product lines so that Nimsoft can manage customers’ elastic cloud and virtualized workloads.... Then late last month, Nimsoft announced monitoring support for Vblock Infrastructure Packages,"

Nimsoft on Demand, Usage Metering, Vblock monitoring = innovative product marketing = programs managed by KJR Associates! - had to brag a bit!

K

KJR Associates Summer 2010 Update

Dear Friends

Just a quick note to let you know what I've been up to and highlight some of the success of my clients in the market.

Nimsoft continues to roll. Since the CA acquisition, (see my blog on how we drove valuation with killer positioning), I've helped the team drive their killer IT Monitoring solution into the SaaS market, with 2 release in the last 4 months. Nimsoft On Demand is a really amazing market offering and it's been a blast putting it together with the team.

FireEye has also been a great success with the launch and execution of their Modern Malware Exposed marketing campaign and website. See a great BtoB Online article on this initiative, driven by KJR Asssociates.

My most recent client addition is Eccentex, an emerging leader in Case Management Platform as a Service. These guys have the potential to disrupt this enterprise market the same way that Salesforce disrupted CRM. Bookmark these guys in your mind and watch for them over the next few years.

In addition, I've been busy blogging, and have created a new blog focused on the unique challenges of marketing IT Security products - check it out here!

Lastly, thanks to all of you have been generous with your time, advice and referrals, I could not have built this business without you. Please give me a holler if you want to chat or catch up.

Cheers
Ken

"Built to Last" Positioning

Nice article by Bruce Schier today on Nimsoft's latest announcement around their Unified Monitoring strategy and products got me thinking about positioning that lasts.

We launched Unified at Nimsoft 9 months ago, and the message resonates as much now as it did then, and I see no slowing down. What I am wondering makes good positioning last long? Is there good positioning that doesn't have a long life, probably not... Here's a few things I know about positioning that's "built to last"...

1. Built to last positioning leads the customer to solutions to BOTH today's and tomorrow's challenges
2. Built to last positioning puts (positive) internal pressure on the product roadmap, because it accelerates aspects of the product that matter, which probably weren't the focus before the positioning was articulated
3. Built to last positioning is in synch with customer needs, market trends AND brand "permission". If anyone of these is weak, the stool falls down
4. Built to last positioning isn't accidental, it's well thought out and articulated, and takes hard work to get to
5. Built to last positioning becomes part of the DNA of the company, it changes not just messaging, but roadmap, selling strategies, support priorities and investments.
6. Built to last positioning is easy to see in hindsight, but really hard to figure out ahead of time (see #3)
7. The value of built to last positioning is expressed ultimately in increased sales and shareholder value

Nimsoft is a great case study in this, their Unified Monitoring strategy has paid off in product innovation, ramping sales, improved communications, and as is well known, in shareholder value.

What are your thoughts on how to forge built to last positioning???

Positioning from Strength - the Nimsoft Story

(Republished in support of the series on Sramana Mitra's blog interview Series of CEO Gary Read..."From Bootstrap to 350M")

Friday, April 16, 2010

Positioning from Strength

Often I observe that when business is good, positioning gets stale. However, no one cares. As one of my good CFO friends once told me "Top line growth covers a lot of rocks". I think this is a shame, and a real missed opportunity. Positioning from Strength is a HIGHLY leveragable activity, one that has the potential to accelerate both business and valuation.

Take my client Nimsoft, recently acquired by CA for $350M on a very healthy multiple. When I arrived to work with the CEO, Gary Read and his exec team, business was going great. Nimsoft had (and still has) a tremendous product, great sales momentum and was an execution machine. However, to Gary's credit, he was open and receptive to a discussion of positioning, vision and go forward marketing strategy, in a way that was highly unusual for a business going so well.

I think Gary saw that Nimsoft was sitting at the apex of an opportunity to reposition from strength, and to use that strength to build a platform and vision that was forward looking and unique. That's exactly what we did when we launched and implemented the Nimsoft Unified Monitoring strategy, architecture, alliance and .com portal.

The results, well they speak for themselves, great going forward positioning, coupled with continued amazing execution led to continued growth and the CA transaction. But we are not done yet, and this week took the next step with the launch of Nimsoft On Demand, a SaaS delivery of Nimsoft Unified Monitoring. Look for more great things to come from the Nimsoft business now that it is part of CA, this is only the beginning.

So, I think this shows very strongly the value of positioning from strength. CEOs and BODs, don't wait for the crisis, IF YOUR BUSINESS IS GOING GREAT, and you haven't examined your GTM positioning and messaging within the last 12-18 months, there's never been a better time than right now...(Need help, well, I know someone who's pretty good at this :))...

Social media, innovation, B2B Product Marketing

I've been long since posting. I've been busy with clients and at home with the end of school year rush of events. Lots going on...

Been thinking a lot about Social Media, Innovation and B2B Product Marketing and the various intersections of these. I think there's a big change going on in B2B, lot's has been written about the new "Science" of analytical marketing, but at the same time, there is a huge gap on "Strategic Analytics" for B2B product marketers. I think there is a very real oppty to advance the science and tools that product marketers have at their disposal. More thoughts to come.

In addition, I am curious, if you are a product marketing professional, where do you go for help, advise and learning?? How do you find industry best practices when faced with a problem? Where do you advance your "toolkit"?? What role does social media play today, and do you find it worth your time???

More to come on these topics....

Ken

Next Gen Threat Protection.

Check this new blog and site from FireEye out. Cool stuff!!!! Last week I wrote about the emerging Next Gen FireWalls, essentially consolidated policy management and compliance products. For next gen threat prevention, interesting to see what FireEye has offered up...

www.modernmalwareexposed.org and blog.modernmalwareexposed.com

Cheers
Ken

Why Checkpoint (and Cisco and Fortinet and PAN) Should Take Notice of McAfee...

(Disclaimer: I previously ran product Marketing for Secure Computing and McAfee Network Security so has some bias, though hold NO market positions in any of the companies in this blog)

In Sept of 2008, days before the market collapse, Secure Computing accepted an all-cash offer from McAfee. In November, the deal closed. Many wondered what the future of Sidewinder, one of the oldest, but arguably most secure and revered product in the market. In less than 2 yrs, we now have the answer, with McAfee Firewall Enterprise V8.0. 8.0 is a BIG release, even if it only does some of what was announced. Application and user awareness, ePO integration and more make this a big product.

Next generation firewalls are coming hard and fast into the market, led by the innovative and disruptive Palo Alto Networks. Fortinet and others also have some level of this capability, and you can bet that network players Cisco and Juniper are not far behind.

With 8.0 , McAfee has fired a broad shot across the bow of the firewall market. Sure, lotsa questions remain, everything from performance to IPS on 8.0 and its impact on the OTHER McAfee IPS product line, to can McAfee win the love of the channel. However, this is a shot to be reckoned with. McAfee has a $500M+ Netsec business and wants more.

A bit more on IPS. The market seems to be saying this...1) IPS is part of the Next Gen FW 2) IPS provides compliance level protection 3) We need more innovation for threat prevention (witness the recent SNORT NRG initiative.) Now, I see this convergence as a leaving a wide open space for Next generation threat prevention at the NW level, a product that protects against today's browser based attacks, not the network probes of the past. Who/What will emerge to fill that gap?? That's a post for another time...

Positioning from Strength

Often I observe that when business is good, positioning gets stale. However, no one cares. As one of my good CFO friends once told me "Top line growth covers a lot of rocks". I think this is a shame, and a real missed opportunity. Positioning from Strength is a HIGHLY leveragable activity, one that has the potential to accelerate both business and valuation.

Take my client Nimsoft, recently acquired by CA for $350M on a very healthy multiple. When I arrived to work with the CEO, Gary Read and his exec team, business was going great. Nimsoft had (and still has) a tremendous product, great sales momentum and was an execution machine. However, to Gary's credit, he was open and receptive to a discussion of positioning, vision and go forward marketing strategy, in a way that was highly unusual for a business going so well.

I think Gary saw that Nimsoft was sitting at the apex of an opportunity to reposition from strength, and to use that strength to build a platform and vision that was forward looking and unique. That's exactly what we did when we launched and implemented the Nimsoft Unified Monitoring strategy, architecture, alliance and .com portal.

The results, well they speak for themselves, great going forward positioning, coupled with continued amazing execution led to continued growth and the CA transaction. But we are not done yet, and this week took the next step with the launch of Nimsoft On Demand, a SaaS delivery of Nimsoft Unified Monitoring. Look for more great things to come from the Nimsoft business now that it is part of CA, this is only the beginning.

So, I think this shows very strongly the value of positioning from strength. CEOs and BODs, don't wait for the crisis, IF YOUR BUSINESS IS GOING GREAT, and you haven't examined your GTM positioning and messaging within the last 12-18 months, there's never been a better time than right now...(Need help, well, I know someone who's pretty good at this :))...

New Google Docs ---Document Nirvana or Document Socialism

So, Google releases a whole new update to google docs today with MUCH fanfare and the requisite sexy blog and youtube video... This ones been in me for a while, and while there are a lot of little reasons I'm not sold (such as dont see biz value of Simultaneous editing, Version control really weak, Change tracking is not so hot, offline access, feature parity to SW) these gaps will are are being closed.)

I think the biggest reason is I want to own my docs!!!

I live my life in a world of docs, spreadsheets and presos, they are the way I create, communicate and distribute intellectual property. Yes, I often do this in teams, and LOVE Box.net for that. But I don't really want you to change that formula or that bullet point and obliterate my content. Do it, save it and call it V2. If I do let you do it to the live one, how do I easily and painlessly see the changes from the one on my hard drive??

I think content ownership IS a big deal ESPECIALLY when working with teams. To me, Google Doc paradigm is Content socialism, and I guess I want private property, even when I let you onto the property and even move the furniture! I've always found pass the baton editing (Sharing sites like box.net fill the bill well for this) more effective than group gropes, which I love on the whiteboard but find incredibly frustrating when dealing with constrained content like Docs, spreadsheet and presos...

Am I a dinosaur?? What do you think???

For IT Technology Vendor Go to Market plans, the 4th C=Cloud!

This ones bursting out like a rainstorm (pun intended) exciting stuff...

Eucalyptus, according to GigaMon, appears to be on the verge of raising a round with a post valuation of $100M on best I can tell revenues in the $0M range! (Granted, a big name CEO joined, but still, 100M valuation??) When I saw this, it really got me thinking of 1) are we entering a cloud bubble and 2) why, even if we are, how the cloud is changing the business that I and my clients are in. I'll leave topic 1 for another day, but let's take a look at #2.

4Ps and 3Cs - A Cloudy View
Let's pull out the trusty old standard and QUICKLY examine how these change or might change because of the cloud....

Product - The cloud opens up new delivery options for just about any hardware or software offering or capability. IT vendors MUST rethink their product plans and at a minimum better have good reasons NOT to be in the cloud.

Pricing and Cost- In IT mind, cloud = subscription, but does cloud = cheap? That's one of many open questions. The move from perpetual to subscription business is a very tricky one the bigger you get, but the cloud is accelerating an already present trend. Services = subscription. IT products = services...get it...How do you price cloud offerings relative to your traditional on premise/package ones...

And on the cost side, the good news, it's really cheap to get into business, no more hardware, no more datacenters, no more test labs, no more power bills. Ahhh, that works great for new start-ups. But aren't you ISVs used to zero marginal costs on sales. Sorry!, get ready for COGS, more users = more COGS. A great example of a business model issue that helps new entrants move faster than existing ones.

Worried about margin cannabilization, well, guess what, the yCombinator start up down the street built hosting COGs into the model from day 1. They don't expect 95% margins, but you do, oh, no wonder their offering is cheaper. Oh, and by they way, they've been built for low cost scaling too, while it's going to take you a year to get there. Price for scale now and take a margin hit??? Oh so many great marketing problems to solve!

Place - How do you spell "disinter-mediation?" C-L-O-U-D. As product become services, product providers become service providers. Distribution is "free" and
market friction goes away. New geos open without friction. At least that's the theory, but the reality is much more complex and the channel will not go away without a fight and transforming itself...

Promotion - Try and buy, freemium, SEO, Social Media, Viral spread. The Cloud accelerates ALL of these trends. Time to learn some new tricks???

Customer - Who's your customer, where are they, what do they expect. What are they thinking, what are their habits, who cares about you? How do they find you (see P=Promotion) and how do they expect to be found. As more customers can easily try your product is it right for them, are you missing new growth segments that you just aren't looking for???

Company - Is the company ready for change? Is the executive team engaged or scared. How high is the sponsorship of cloud inititatives? Is it genuine of lip service. Do you understand the business model barriers to transformation? Sales quota and incentives, rev rec, HR policies? This type of change can hit every corner of the business, you've got to be ready.

Competition - New competitors, more cloud ready, new substitute products, new pricing models to compete with and on and on. What Hosting provider or Telco would have ever predicted Amazon as a competitor???

OK, have I convinced you or is the cloud all hype? I'm ready to add the 4th C to the old model, CLOUD! Are You????

Great Day for Nimsoft! Nice day for KJR...Positioning matters

Yesterday, my first and still active client Nimsoft got acquired by CA for an OUTSTANDING valuation of $350M. You can read ALL about it a here.

Just a great result for Nimsoft customers, employees and shareholders, as CEO Gary Read said here, a "Triple Play!".

Lot's of commentators have lauded this deal, one particular comment stuck out for me from the Register here:


Specifically, the quote I'd point out (with the emphasis mine) is....
"Last October, the company rolled out a new integrated suite of products called Unified Monitoring, the main reason why CA is interested in Nimsoft. The Unified Monitoring suite doesn't just babysit all the physical and virtual stuff humming away in the data center, but also Amazon EC2 and Rackspace Cloud compute and storage utilities, Salesforce.com CRM software and Google Apps for Business...."

I am proud to have played a role in helping Gary and the team position and align both the communications and the product roadmap to this new vision last year. It's proven to be the right product at the right time, and the team has done an a great job of articulating and then acting on a vision with the speed and delivery of a great company. It's one thing to talk the talk, it's another to really embrace it. Yesterday, connecting vision, positioning AND execution really paid off. Congrats!!! Well done, and thanks for having me be part of it.

Gary talks alot about Cloud being a discontinuity in the market, and that new winners and leaders will emerge. Gary has both vision and execution, and CA is lucky to get the team, and in my opinion, got a bargain!

Keep up the great delivery and lead the CA team into the brave new future of Unified Monitoring....