Vixel Corporation

Industry

Business Challenge

• When Schwartz began working with Vixel in early 2002, the company had an 11-year history as multi-product vendor of Fibre Channel transceivers, hubs, fabric switches for storage area networks (SANs). Although it had very viable technologies, the company had experienced a difficult time in the storage market and its market cap had deflated to the $50 million range. Schwartz needed to help Vixel reposition itself around its new InSpeed technology and the emerging embedded storage switch market. Vixel also needed to gain legitimacy quickly as a chip technology provider.
• Schwartz faced an immediate challenge with storage analysts because there was no embedded storage switch category. Extremely persistent analyst outreach would be necessary if the agency was to convince analysts that this was an emerging market that they should cover. The PR agency also had to target a wide variety of storage analysts—storage server, switch, peripheral, software and chip—in order to do this.
• Storage media were just as skeptical as analysts about “embedded switching.” The public relations outreach had to convince them that this was a viable market and that InSpeed was a market leading solution, despite the fact that Vixel was the only vendor with an embedded switching technology.
• Another constraint to the PR program was the fact that Vixel sold its InSpeed technology through storage OEMs so there were virtually no customers to attest to the value of the InSpeed technology. The public relations agency had to create news and a sense of market acceptance with the OEM partners who were willing to discuss the value of embedded switching.
• Once Schwartz had helped to create the embedded switching market via press and analyst relations, the agency had to position Vixel with the financial media as a company meeting demand for the InSpeed products and one that was well on its way down the path to profitability.

Schwartz PR Strategy

• Launching the InSpeed product with a media tour to the storage industry reporters and analysts.
• Generating a solid stream of coverage of Vixel news that included awards and technology reviews as well as news announcements.
• Placing bylined articles in strategic storage media that extolled the benefits of InSpeed technology.
• Building solid relationships with the reporters and analysts who covered Vixel through frequent meetings at major industry events as well as frequent one-on-one visits to their offices.
• Producing an industry roundtable on embedded storage switching.
• Executing a business media tour for Vixel’s CEO.

Results

• Over a period of nine months, Schwartz secured 89 media placements and 56 media briefings for Vixel. Schwartz also arranged 51 analyst briefings with 46 analysts representing 21 different firms. In working with the weekly trades, storage publications, onlines and the storage analyst community, Schwartz successfully communicated a complete corporate strategy shift for Vixel.
• After supporting Vixel’s initial product launch and successfully driving the company’s repositioning of itself within both its industry and the investor community, momentum for the company’s products took root and its new identity became synonymous with embedded storage switch technologies.
• Analyst and storage reporters began describing Vixel as a chip company.
• Computer Technology Review recognized Vixel’s InSpeed product line with the publication’s Editor’s Choice Award and a half-page article in the magazine.
• As a result of this sustained public relations campaign, Vixel cemented solid relationships with the reporters and analysts who follow its space. Vixel’s InSpeed was covered in leading technology and storage publications, including InfoWorld, InformationWeek, Network World, Computer Technology News and InfoStor. In addition, well known storage writer and industry luminary Jon Toigo featured a standalone piece on Vixel in his “Storage Strategies” column.
• Vixel and its InSpeed technology also gained endorsements from leading storage analysts, such as IDC’s John McArthur, Taneja Group’s Arun Taneja, Gartner’s Nick Allen, Evaluator Group’s Randy Kerns, Data Mobility Group’s John Webster and others.
• Schwartz also secured various speaking opportunities for Vixel’s chief technology officer, including speaking spots at Internet World’s Fall 2002 Conference, Comdex 2002, SAN East Conference and the Server Blade Summit.
• By October 2003, Emulex Corporation, a NYSE-traded company and the storage industry’s leading provider of host bus adapter technologies, had recognized Vixel’s growth prospects and its synergistic technology value and purchased Vixel for $310 million.
• Schwartz had successfully convinced both analysts and reporters that the back end “switched architecture” enabled by InSpeed technology represented a brand new way of creating more powerful, more manageable and more scaleable storage architectures.

©2008 Schwartz Communications, Inc.
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