Avocent: maintaining the lifeblood of the company at high availability
IT is the lifeblood of virtually every company. Its constant availability is not a luxury, but rather a necessity in the battle for market share and customer satisfaction. Avocent dedicates its products and services to ensuring that companies can use information technology without interruption. The manufacturer’s out-of-band infrastructure facilitates access to servers and other appliances in the network via the “back door”. Administrators can therefore diagnose the cause of failures within minutes without having to use the LAN and eliminate the problem – even if the machines affected are thousands of kilometres away. Companies are able to dramatically cut the risks and costs of their IT operation and simultaneously raise the productivity of their staff and IT resources.
Goals and challenges
As a niche provider of high-tech products and services, Avocent was scarcely known in the German media. The company offers an innovative, extremely exciting technology – although the scope of solutions was relatively narrow. The challenge lay in not only making the complex technology comprehensible to trade journalists, but also to make it palatable enough for editorial teams to include articles about it in their publications. The goal was to make Avocent the number one name in the target media and among their readers as a network infrastructure provider that offers companies a real productivity advantage.
Activities and campaigns
- Press releases that,in just a few words, explain the complex solutions in an understandable way;communicate Avocent’s technology in a wider thematic environment;visualise the importance of Avocent on the German market(such as for new customers or partners).
- Professional articles placed on two levels:1st stage: Basic articles that explain the general way in which the out-of-band infrastructure (OOBI) works, together with its advantages, and illustrate how it integrates into over-arching subjects such as business continuity.2nd stage: Follow-on articles that portray the specialist technological aspects of OOBI.
- Technology briefings for journalists in the form of one-to-one discussions. Setup of a “faithful editorial team” through repeated face-to-face contacts via editorial visits and trade fair appointments.
Results
The most important result from the press activities carried out so far is the fact that Avocent has been able to gather around itself a reliable “circle of friends” made up of trade journalists. In some cases, journalists have been inspired to have one-to-one discussions three times a year (for example in relation to different trade fairs). These dates were generally followed by the posting of articles and expert statements. The key journalists are curious about further technological innovations and monitor the company’s development with keen interest. Product tests have been actively suggested by various editorial teams.