George Crump of Storage Switzerland has a post up today on Network Computing that really should be made required reading for every single mid-level executive in the storage industry and beyond. He offers the following simple, straightforward advice:
“…every vendor’s opening slide should have three bullets: The exact problem the solve, why they are different, and how much the product costs. Optionally, the slide could end with a ‘Should we continue? Yes or No?’”
Leaving aside the wisdom of putting a price up on the very first slide, the main point–what problem do you solve?–is the crucial piece here. When you step back and look at it, this is one of those more than obvious pieces of advice. Why else are you giving the presentation? Yet, I dare you to take a look at your slides–the ones you present to analysts, prospects, and others. What does the first one say? I thought so.
If you’re not fixing something that’s broken, why are you in business? Or, if you don’t like the negativity, you can use a phrase that my friend Tony Asaro at Contemplating IT prefers, you’re addressing “pent up demand.” That’s fine too–in fact it might be a more accurate way of expressing the situation.
The main thing is that you’re addressing some THING, not doing a creative but ultimately useless science research project. And most likely you are. But many companies are so enamored with their cool tech they forget all about the purpose of their existence. Their slides (and web sites, and press releases and other promotional platforms) are all focused inward on themselves, rather than on their raison d’etre–their customers.
Here’s an example of a problem that needs solving. Data growth is raging out of control. As it happens, it is unstructured data that is posing the biggest threat to data centers worldwide–email, documents, photos, videos, sound files–in short, the detritus of our wired age. The problem isn’t getting better–in fact, it’s worsening with each passing day. Despite the fact that the cost of disk is going down, the environmental and monetary price to be paid for cooling, power and rack space could cripple a number of otherwise healthy concerns.
Here’s how Graham Hobson, CTO of Photobox, Europe’s largest photo sharing site, explained his problem to me when I interviewed him last spring: “Our data was growing by leaps and bounds–on busy days, millions of photos are uploaded to our servers. If we were to fill a typical data center rack with storage systems, we needed 32 amps of power. But a lot of these data centers in Europe are really only geared up to provide 8 or 16 amps per rack. They were designed for telecom. So there are very few suppliers we can go to that have rack space and that power quota. And of the people that remain they’re not really inclined to give discounts, because their costs are rising.” In short, the company was literally running out of space to store their customers’ data.
That constitutes a serious and pressing issue in my book. What problem does your company solve? Is it spelled out on the first slide of all of your presentations? If not, why not?
