mdawson product strategy preso geek girls 12 7-12 sanitized

www.symform.com The Revolutionary Cloud Storage Network

The Revolutionary Cloud Storage Network

Margaret Dawson, Vice President, Product Management & Marketing December 6, 2012

Product Strategy


Build it and they will come . . . .

A technologist’s dream

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And great engineering, design and coding!

Great products DO take a great idea

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➡What is the problem you are solving?

➡Who is the product for?

➡Do they need it?

➡How much would they pay for it?

➡ Is somebody already doing it?

➡Are those competitors doing well? How well?

➡How do we keep growing?

Just some of the important questions:

But it takes much more

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12 Steps to Product Success


1. Have a Vision!


I have a dream . . . .

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Symform Vision in the Beginning

To make cloud storage the same price as local

storage

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Symform Vision today (3 years later)

to build the world’s first “Exabyte Factory” by

crowdsourcing data storage over the Internet

and creating the largest global “virtual” data

center.

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2. Do Your Research


Many companies NEVER do market research

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Overall SaaS Integration Market Opportunity

Hubspan Confidential

$3B+ market opportunity for SaaS-based integration and

file transfer as well as high value-added brokerage services

for partners

B2B Integration

as a Service

$2B

Cloud

Broker

Services

$200M

Source: Gartner & Forrester Reports and Hubspan Analysis. 2012 Market Forecast

File

Transfer

as a

Service

$500M

PO & Invoices Top Integration Processes

Customer Business Processes they Integrate today (check all that apply)

48% 47%

41% 39% 39%

33% 31%

23% 18%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Source: Hubspan Application & Integration Survey, 2011

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Top 3 Priorities When Considering Cloud?

Data Protection, Self-Management & Scalability Top the List

70%

45% 45%

38%

32% 29%

21%

8%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

Ability toSecure Data

Easy to SelfManage

Easyscalability

Fast on-ramping ofpartners

DataRecoverycapability

"Pay as I go"Pricing Model

Requires noCapital

Expense

Other

Source: Hubspan Cloud Usage Survey, 2010


Cloud Storage & Backup Market

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• Very large & noisy – large vendors

• Predatory pricing

• Low value add

• Average data stored 10-50GB

Consumer

• Single-digit penetration

• All players promising revenue here

• Economics still broken

• Data protection equates business existence

• Average data stored 500GB – 10TB

Mid-Market

• Minimal penetration

• Pain around very high costs of all storage

• Advanced security & privacy vital

• Data protection required for compliance & governance

• Average data stored in the Petabytes

Enterprise


3. Understand the Market & the Competition


➡Being first doesn’t matter if nobody needs/wants the product

➡Being later to market is fine if you can:

• Improve on what’s out there

• Take a different twist on it

• Hit a different part of the market

First or Later to Market?

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4. Choose Your Market Niche


Find a place to succeed

I skate to where the puck is going,

not where it’s been! Wayne Gretzky

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5. Know the Target Customer & Their Pain


Small and Medium Businesses (SMB)

Who is our target customer?

Prosumer SMB Small SMB Medium 0 – 4 employees 5 – 99 employees 100 – 499 employees

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What pain do our target customers have?

➡Data growing faster than their business

➡High cost and overhead to manage and protect data

➡Compliance and governance requirements

➡Tight budgets

➡Lack of resources force target customers to prioritize / lifeboat data that is backed up

➡Minimal to no internal IT resources

➡At risk SMBs that are not protected by a larger entity’s backup procedures

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What scenarios will they use us for?

1. Offsite storage & backup

2. Backup Disaster Recovery (BDR)

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Prosumer

Who is our target customer today?

• Individual business owner or hobbyist

• Relies on word of mouth

• Minimal to no IT experience

• Has lots of valuable data

• Typical industries would be:

Photographer

Graphic Designer

Architect

Lawyer

• Might need to work with IT service

provider

• Very budget sensitive

Sally

Photographer

Best Images

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Small SMB


• Largest group of SMBs

• Once 50 employees, probably has at least

one internal IT person

• Struggles to stay current in multiple fields


Healthcare Offices

Engineering firms (CAD/CAM)

Advertising / marketing

Technology companies

• Only doing local backup and swap

• Owner approves all IT decisions

• Should be working with IT

consultant/service provider

Mike

Network/IT Guy

Tri Valley Clinics

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Medium SMB


• Usually has internal IT department but

under staffed and minimal budget

• Networks with peers for ideas and

recommendations

• Embracing the cloud to obtain next

generation solutions and save dollars

• Already uses SaaS applications

• Trying to figure out data management,

backup, DR, etc.


Healthcare Organizations

Large engineering firms (CAD/CAM)

Technology Companies

Manufacturing

Steve

IT Manager

Cool Designs

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6. Identify a Go To Market / Channel


What is our go-to-market strategy?

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RESELLERS • Managed Service

Provider

• IT Consultants

• Technology Service

Companies

ATTACH • NAS Devices

• Storage Devices

• Other solutions

DIRECT • To the SMB or

Prosumer

• Focus on mid-

size to minimize

channel conflict

VIRAL • Freemium and

word of mouth to

drive nodes on

the network


Value proposition by Go To Market

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RESELLERS ATTACH DIRECT VIRAL

• Higher margins

• Easy to deploy

• Instant Restore

• Handles large data

volumes

• Leading data protection &

security (Resilient Storage

Architecture)

• Can Contribute on behalf

of customers

• Complements MSP

management and customer

backup solutions

Adds instant cloud storage offering

High Margins

Increases value

their customers can

obtain from their

solutions

Competitive

differentiation

Great price

Flat fee pricing

eliminates escalating

costs

User licenses cover

multiple devices

Works with your

existing local infrastructure

Runs automatically in

the background, self-

monitoring, self-healing

Secure

FREE

Invite friends

Cool technology

More value when

collaboration is

added


7. Build a Prototype


Find a Champion(s) & Validate

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➡Show it to everyone you trust

➡Get meetings with angel investors

➡Get people to play with it, break it, use it

➡ Identify a few “target customers” and get them to review it in exchange for free product, early releases, whatever

And hit the road

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➡ If they don’t like it, start over

➡ Incorporate feedback and do your product plan

Update your product plan

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➡Do you have the skill set needed? Really?

➡Can you get help?

➡Do you need more money to get it off the ground?

Do a resource assessment

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8. Build a BASELINE product


➡Start with basic feature set

➡Don’t over-engineer

➡Go back to your research

What’s the BASELINE product?

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➡Faster to market with a ‘good enough’ product is better than a perfect product to market too late

Get the Beta out there quickly

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➡Get the beta out to as many people as possible

➡Make noise everywhere

➡ If you have no money, use social media, friends, family

➡Create a forum, facebook page, etc., so people can leave comments

➡Spend a little money to “launch” the product at an event where you’ll know there will be media

Find early adopters

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Good Examples of Simple Base Product

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And not so much . . .

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9. Build V1.0 with Feedback


➡Even if you change just one thing, make a big deal about it, and show that you listened to your beta customers

➡V 1.0 (or a promised roadmap) needs to address biggest concerns and requests

Show You Listened!!

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10. Believe in Marketing


Entrepreneurs often “forget” marketing

➡PR can be most powerful and cheapest marketing tool

➡Combine with social media

➡ Invest in a product marketing person EARLY in the process

➡Get coaching if you are not a good spokesperson

➡Get OUT there: Blog, Tweet, Speak, etc.

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Marketing is now all about digital content

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11. Stick to your Strategy while being Agile


Stick with your strategy

➡Don’t change your pricing, product positioning, messaging, and channel too frequently

➡Give your strategy time to prove true and work or not

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➡Know when to make adjustments

➡Competitive pressures might cause it

➡ If something just doesn’t work right

➡Add incremental improvements quickly

➡Listen to your customers!!

But be Agile

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The Product Plan

Increase

Innovation

and

Revenue:

Decrease

Risk &

Randomization

A Balancing Act


12. Use Metrics!


➡Market share

➡Topline revenue and bottom line

➡Customer satisfaction

➡Uptime or other reliability metrics

➡Release on time

➡Number of users or licenses

➡Share of voice

➡Web traffic

➡Conversion rates

➡Churn rates

Everyone should be metrics driven

Measure key indicators

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Thank You

[email protected]

@seattledawson

Cloud Connect

Advisory Council

CloudNOW

Steering Committee

mailto:[email protected]

mdawson product strategy preso geek girls 12 7-12 sanitized

Documents

cloud storage backup

offsite storage backup

hubspan cloud usage

data compliance

data pay

lifeboat data

market research11

market niche