Experiences at HDS - Director, Storage Network Marketing

Location, responsibilities, compensation.

Good employee golf club.

Cold calling and resumes.

New products and solutions won't sell unless the account local teams understand their value and application.

Global teams, travel, and experiences.

How to convince customers that the Storage paradigm was changing - and all parts of IT needed to cooperate to manage it. Problem was that IT had 100's of servers - each with local storage - while Mainframers had tons of it in the glass house, but it was not connected and neither understood the other. Finally hit on the idea of Storage Assessments - as a means to a) get all IT groups in the same room to talk about it, b) present potential current technology solutions to their issues, and c) develop a consensus to address their problems....

Learning the true roles and contributions of the many departments. Changing product mixes created overlapping responsibilities and while the organization adapts, but never quite as quickly as it needs to, it seems.

- Recruited and signed software partners to build SAN and File Backup product and service offerings. Developed business cases; presented and managed cases through a formal review and approval process. Negotiated pricing and support contracts. Introduced new offerings to sales force and channel partners. Contributed to a 46% increase in overall storage sales.
- Delivered on-site customer SAN Assessments as a billable service. Educated customers on benefits of consolidating storage. Developed business cases around HDS products. Every Assessment resulted in a subsequent sale.
- Business Director on Veritas and HP OEM teams. Facilitated successful alliances. Rolled out Veritas products to HDS global sales force....