The Packet Scoop

I once sat next to a guy on an airplane who worked for Proctor & Gamble. After noticing his business card on his bag, I said “what do you do for P&G?”. He said “I sell toilet paper.” Within a moment I knew exactly what he did. He didn’t have to tell me anything more. I understood his channel, his price point, and his value proposition (soft I hope). I understood everything about his business. He even up-sold me within thirty seconds on the clear benefits of double-ply over single ply.

I quickly realized he had it easy. A messy problem to solve (cleaning one’s backside), and a simple solution (double ply with ridges)…

In that short conversation I learned that a focused solution to a problem always wins. So, when I was a vice president at SonicWALL we had a saying, “Tape Sucks!” Yep. That was it. It told our customers and channel partners everything about us in two words. Tape Sucks. The pain point is so clear and the answer is so simple - an easy to deploy, simple to use device that just plugs into your network and backs up your data to itself (local disk), then to an offsite location – kind of like SonicWALL CDP.

A simple to identify problem and an easy to articulate solution.

Now that a few of us have started PacketTrap Networks, we’re trying to figure out an easy way to articulate the value proposition of network management software. The problem is that network management software ROI is calculated with soft savings (i.e. saved labor time) and, as such, savings from maximizing network uptime is one of those elusive hard to sell to CIO statistics.

Everyone knows you need high quality stable network management software, but I’m not sold that one can calculate a simple, easily defensible ROI. It’s kind of like billboard advertising. Cisco does it and so does Budweiser, but I’m not sure there’s a statistic that quantifies a billboard’s presence to an up-tick in product sales. But we know that billboards works. And we also know that network management software saves IT departments time and money. Network management tools are just a requirement to run today’s exponentially expanding and sometimes overwhelming IT environments.

I’m not sure we’ll get this down to “I sell toilet paper” or “tape sucks,” but let me put it this way. Today’s networks are complex. You’re managing VoIP, SaaS, virtualization, Microsoft, Linux, Exchange, hundreds of users, 10 different applications, and a boss who will be really upset if your network went down. I think it’s time to evaluate a new breed of network management software like our pt360 Tool Suite. After all, keeping your job could be the difference between you personally being able to afford the softness of Charmin over the cardboard-like swipes of Safeway brand single ply.

Steve

p.s. I think you’ll like this backup and recovery parody: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2exBlpkgFY