Egenera markets data center infrastructure orchestration solutions but it didn’t always talk about itself that way.  Historically, the company promoted its own blade server hardware and a piece of complementary software that made managing the hardware easy, cost efficient and reliable. In 2008, it was very clear the market was fundamentally changing and Egenera needed to realign its business strategy.

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By Christine Crandell

A Forward View project was launched by marketing and included product management, product marketing, and competitive intelligence.  The scope included blade server hardware, virtualization, Grid/HPC computing, disaster recovery, data center infrastructure, data center planning and management, infrastructure management, cloud computing, utility computing and dynamic data center solutions for all industries in the USA’s Fortune 500 and 2000 markets.  The data sweep included research and reports from Wall Street analysts, industry analysts, congressional and US government agency initiatives, peer review academic journals, World Bank/IMF, computer societies, and commissioned studies by leading system integrators.

A Forward View project was launched by marketing and included product management, product marketing, and competitive intelligence.  The scope included blade server hardware, virtualization, Grid/HPC computing, disaster recovery, data center infrastructure, data center planning and management, infrastructure management, cloud computing, utility computing and dynamic data center solutions for all industries in the USA’s Fortune 500 and 2000 markets.  The data sweep included research and reports from Wall Street analysts, industry analysts, congressional and US government agency initiatives, peer review academic journals, World Bank/IMF, computer societies, and commissioned studies by leading system integrators.

The significant macro trends included:

• Data centers are in the early stages of the most significant transformation of the past decade driving considerable disruption for the next 3-5 years.
• 3rd phase of virtualization is heterogeneous virtualization but not before 2012 when transparent environments appear; in the meantime the value proposition of virtualization is shifting to management tools.
• The future of virtualization technology will be to forget virtualization. 
• Cloud computing will mainstream in 2-5 years and is considered transformational - the hype peak will be reached in 2010.
• Users will not completely abandon on-premise models or buy complex mission critical processes through a cloud.
• Infrastructure is on an inevitable shift from components that are physically integrated by vendors to logically composed “fabrics” of computing, I/O, and storage components.

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The Forward View resulted in a clarified company strategy around the PAN Manager software solution that included a separate brand and business model for the hardware and software products. Signposts were set for the major trend points and specific marketing triggers were defined.  One signpost was the rise of demand for unified management tools; the trigger was a shift in the market conversation to focus on the value of unified management tools like PAN Manager. When Cisco announced their Unified Computing solution, Egenera was ready with messaging, media pitches and content to highlight its value add as a unified management tool.  The result was substantial, and the correct, mindshare developed around PAN Manager.   While the Forward View was instrumental in clarifying the purpose and performance targets for 2008 and 2009, it also provided the necessary insight to launch a strategic issues-based public relations campaign that, very effectively, put Egenera ‘on the map’ and dramatically increased awareness.

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