Stratus

Successfully moving a major hardware company into a new market called for an issue-based six-month strategy with byline features and trade show events.

Stratus Technologies is a 22-year-old provider of fault-tolerant servers for the Windows operating system environment.

The Challenge

"When Stratus decided to make the Public Safety market a primary focus, we put a lot of faith in PAN to get us out in front of the decision makers in the market. Over the past year, we have rapidly grown our segment and a lot of this is due to the media relationships and exposure that our public relations campaign garnered for us."

John Leonard
Director of Public Safety, Stratus Technologies

In early 2003, the company decided to move into the Public Safety market. Public safety professionals know that seconds count when protecting life and property. These first responders are entrusted with acting upon emergency calls in an instant—so using nothing less than fault-tolerant technology to support Public Safety will do.

The Stratus value proposition within this market is relatively clear: if the 9-1-1 call center fails, there is a chance that loss of life may be the consequence.

Having worked with Stratus for more than a year, PAN was tasked with creating a specific public relations campaign targeted towards the Public Safety market to increase sales of the company's ftServer line, making it the server of choice when any 'Request For Proposal' (RFP) was issued by a Public Safety municipality.

The Strategy

To start, PAN conducted in-depth research into the public safety market and discovered that there were a number of issues, including homeland security, privacy issues and data sharing. After having conversations with industry experts around these issues, PAN provided Stratus with an initial six-month PR plan with our goals, thoughts and recommendations as the company embarked on this new market of focus.

In order to gain further insight into the work already being done within the Public Safety market, PAN outreached to the initial group of partners that Stratus had relationships. It was then evident that public relations and general media outreach was not the norm within this market. It was going to take a more creative approach than simple case study placements to not only grow the Stratus name within this market, but also to educate the partners and customers of the benefits of our campaign.

PAN then began its initial outreach to key publications such as 9-1-1 Magazine, MissionCritical Communications, Law Enforcement Technology and Police Chief Magazine in order to introduce each of the editors and technology reporters to Stratus and their core offering of fault-tolerant technologies. Following these conversations, PAN recommended a byline program that would first and foremost show the need for fault-tolerant technologies throughout this market. PAN was able to secure interest in a byline feature article that would focus on the need for high availability within all CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch) Centers across the country. Once this coverage ran, the phones began ringing at Stratus from potential partners and customers. This also illustrated to current partners what it was that PR could do for them and they quickly jumped on board.

In order to continue the momentum, PAN utilized Stratus' attendance, as well as their partners and potential partners, at the annual APCO (Association of Public Safety Communications Officials) Conference and trade show in Indianapolis. PAN proposed an industry round-table discussion involving the best of the best within Public Safety.

The PAN team was able to secure nine current and potential partners for this roundtable discussion and also the attendance of six members of the media. Following this speaking panel, Stratus was the talk of the APCO show and the partner program was beginning to show the fruits of our labor.

The Results

To go along with the speaking panel that Stratus moderated, during the "launch" phase of Stratus within the Public Safety market, the PAN Communications team has been able to position Stratus' John Leonard for a number of industry and IT trade interviews - a small sampling is included below.

InformationWeek
VARBusiness
Federal Computer Week
Government Computer News
9-1-1 Magazine
MissionCritical Communications
NENA News
Law Enforcement Technology
Police Chief Magazine

Stratus has also been able to grow their Public Safety segment by nearly 25 percent in the last year alone. PAN and Stratus continue to pursue the "de-facto" standard that was part of our initial plan when this market awareness campaign began.