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Reactivity Case Study
Category:
SOA Security Software
About:
Located in Redwood City, California, Reactivity was an early stage startup company founded in 1998. It provided leading XML (eXtensible Markup Language) gateway technology for organizations ranging from commercial enterprises to the Global 500. Reactivity's network security solutions enabled customers to efficiently deploy, secure, and accelerate XML and Web services-based solutions.
Challenge:
Reactivity had just closed a second round of financing, led by Accel Partners, and was looking for a strategic marketing expertise to help accelerate business growth. They needed help to position Reactivity’s products in the market, build brand awareness, and build a go-to-market plan to support securing a handful of marquee customers to validate their technology and serve as references for additional sales. A partner at Accel introduced Barbara Saxby to the CEO, and she was hired to fill the interim VP of Marketing role.
Assignment:
Barbara served as interim VP of Marketing and member of the executive management team from May through November 2002. The charter was to strategically position the company and product in a relevant industry category and execute a launch plan through aggressive analyst outreach and public relations programs.
Process:
The first step was to drill down into the technology and analyze the uniqueness of their offering. At the time, the product was called the “Reactivity Application Traffic Control System”. The company was positioned in a crowded space, and was destined to be another “me too” offering. We wanted to reposition it into a new segment where it could own a leadership position. We analyzed current market opportunities and went through strategic positioning and messaging exercises. Given the unique IP around content-based security we evaluated the market opportunities in the emerging Web services sector. Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) was quickly becoming the de facto communications and information exchange standard for this new model of applications. We decided to position the company based on where we believed the market was headed and decided to position the product as an XML Firewall. Upon completing messaging and positioning, we engaged leading analysts from Gartner, the Meta Group, and the Burton Group for feedback and validation. We also evaluated and hired a PR agency to manage the communications plan. We updated the Website messaging and sales collateral, and developed a marketing plan and a target customer profile to help sales find valuable early marquee customers. The public relations campaign was extremely successful with over 16 articles published -- this is very rare for a company without customers.
Outcome:
The company went on to a successful run in what eventually transformed into the SOA security space. In March of 2007 Cisco Systems acquired Reactivity for $135M. The Reactivity team and product portfolio were integrated into the Cisco's Datacenter Switching and Security Technology. |
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"Accelent Consulting helped us determine our go-to-market strategy and Barbara was a tremendous addition to our team as the interim VP of Marketing. She brought relevant industry knowledge and a third party perspective to the role that enabled her to be instantly effective in both strategy and execution. Barbara finalized our market positioning and messaging then successfully launched our company.”
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