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Our External Communications approach falls into three
areas:
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Raise awareness - i.e. generally elevate recognition
that we are "in" a certain segment / sector / market
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Sustainability Leadership There is opportunity to
be a thought-leader in the emerging conversation about the environmental and
energy impact of the next generation data centers. Cisco must begin to participate and tap
into this as a new place for dialog.
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Target: Govt. officials and policymakers; energy, power and
facilities influencers; industry organizations and Consortia; Systems
Integrators and channel partners
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Educate - i.e. ensure people understand our
strategy/differentiators/innovation etc. versus just knowing we do
"something"
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Simplified Messaging: To date Cisco messaging has been focused on DC Virtualization and
somewhat vague in terms of future direction and articulation of our vision
for virtualization. Cisco needs to
continue to refine and simplify our messaging and then bring it to life by
building a library of examples, anecdotes and real life scenarios (ie Cisco
on Cisco).
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A Phased approach Build upon the foundation
established in FY08 and articulate Ciscos larger vision and strategy in the
data center and by extension Ciscos success in identifying market and
technology transitions. Begin to show customer
adoption, ecosystem definition, our proof-points of success, and the emphasis
on the building of talent and expertise in our channel partners. First we
must begin internally to make sure that internal spokespeople at all levels
are on board and speaking with one voice.
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Use our Strengths Because the next generation data
center is being driven by the intersection of computing and communications
infrastructure, we must emphasize our heritage in networking as well as the ecosystem
of partners necessary to make this a reality.
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Target: partners and Strategic Alliances; channel partners;
customers
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Manage Relationships - i.e. get close to the people
who shape public opinion so that they do the "education" and
"awareness raising" for us.
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Establish Baseline: To establish a baseline on
external perceptions PR/AR/IR will conduct informal audits of key influencers
to gain understanding of current perceptions. This engagement will be
conducted at the six month point to review any changes on perception.
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Target: Customers;
Financial analysts,
shareholders; large IT analyst firms and smaller niche data center
experts; General IT/computing/channel press at business and technology
publications
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Target details-
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AR: IDC, Forrester,
Gartner, Nemertes, Ovum/RHK, Burton (top 6)
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PR: In addition to Cisco Top 50 business and industry
media, extend to new audiences and influencers in the areas of enterprise
application development, green computing, organizational transformation, and
data center focused blogs (top 5 include Data Center Links, Data Center
Cental, Data Center Design, Data Center Knowledge, BladeWatch).
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IR: Bernstein, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup
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Expanded Voice We must build
relationships beyond our traditional Cisco and networking experts to build
credibility in this area. Reaching out to industry analysts, media, bloggers
and influencers who have a more traditional data center background and
educating and informing these audiences will be critical to our efforts. We must build a bridge between the
computing and networking experts to help them understand all aspects of this
evolution. Additionally, there is an
opportunity to build more global relationships and expand our scope
specifically in Europe.
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Target: Computing/data center/virtualization/IT
infrastructure analysts at large IT analyst firms; Niche data center experts
and consultants; General IT/computing/application press at business and
technology pubs; data center bloggers
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