Thanksgiving thanks

Things I am thankful for:

My amazing wife and wonderful children
My great friends both new and old
My amazing clients for helping me to build my business
My families health and happiness
My health and happiness
The teachers and educators we are lucky to have
The safety and security we take for granted and enjoy and those who help protect it
Living in this amazing time and place
The fact that I can make the list above!

Over and out...
Ken

Uverse cares? NOT!

My chat with Uverse tech support, guess I was kinda pissed...priceless

Mr. Rutsky, thank you for contacting AT&T U-verse Member Support. My name is REP

How may I assist you with U-verse service today?

ME

I am really pissed off about the loss of Food Network, HGTV and other channels

You need to tell SENIOR MANAGEMENT that they are ffing up big time

I want to make sure this message gets through. We give you 30 days to fix this then we are OUTOF THIS SERVICE!!!

I know this is not a technical issue, but this is the ONLY WAY TO GET ANYONE FROM UVERSE TO ACKNOWLEDGE YOU

PLS confirm that you will pass this up the foodchain...

REP:

Sorry, Mr. Rutsky. As the agreements with the Scripps channel has expired. That is the reason the channels are off air.

I will certainly pass this information, Mr. Rutsky.

ME:

The reason is that ATT management doesnt give a rats ass about what it's customers want. They think it is too hard to switch. This is REALLY NOT Acceptable

and a crappy way to run a business.

pass that on. doesn't ATT have a VP of Cust sat. How can that exec let this happen?

esp when negotiations were ongoing STUPID STUPID STUPID

tell them also to watch twitter, there is NO sympathy for them, just more anger...

REP

We have not expected that this would reach to this situation, we hope that this would be fixed soon.

ME
OK, sorry to yell at someone 3K miles away and 20 steps below the decision maker, but

REP

Every member has raised the same question, how can this be off air when negotiations are going on.

ME

also, according to Food Network, ATT CHOSE to turn this off while neg were going, again total disregard for customers

totally sucks

and they ATT execs will wonder when Google TV rules all

OK, I am done, I am just getting more angry. Like I said, someone at the sr level should understand how much customer anger this generates.

bye

REP

Yes, certainly I agree with you.

I'll escalate this to my supervisor.

My new product marketing blog

I've decided to split my blog. This blog will be my personal one. I am moving my Product Marketing Blog and Business content to my new site, Product (1st) Marketing (2nd), I hope you enjoy it.

Cheers
Ken

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 :))...