Positioning and Growing Adoption for IBM's Full-System Simulator

Product Adoption • Market Strategy • Corporate Messaging • Content Development

Despite the cutting-edge research and development that gave rise to lBM's full-system simulation technology, the Research team faced adoption challenges for its best-in-class product. Unaware of the simulator's power to simulate and test next-generation computer processors, even internal divisions across IBM purchased a competitive commercial product to meet their chip development needs. IBM needed to position its solution as the go-to-technology of choice. 

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Assignment

IBM Research desired a stronger product presence to distinguish its best-of-breed simulation solution within IBM and among the high-performance computing community. In response to internal and competitive pressure, ARL requested a product adoption and positioning strategy along with corresponding messaging to promote and position its technology not just as better R&D but a product that could be used for commercial processor design and development.

Solution

As an initial step, we performed a market audit to evaluate the competition and consumer needs. Based on this analysis, we defined an adoption strategy and positioning plan that would help distinguish the simulator from commercial offerings and establish a stronger presence not only within IBM but among the high-performance computing community. To meet the competitive pressure head-on, we devised a two-pronged strategy to meet differing needs of internal IBM users and the market at large.

Internal IBM teams

We targeted internal users with presentations, webinars, and a new wiki on which our team of researchers posted their current work, code, and documentation. Key to this communication channel was our ability to present IBM's proprietary models and processor research to differentiate IBM technology from more basic, general-use commercial simulation technology. 

Scientific Research and Commercial Community

We promoted the simulator to HPCS scientists and across academic communities in conferences with a well-planned presence externally-facing how-tos, tools, and code on IBM's developerWorks community. We also organized and led a group of researchers to author a series of scientific publications, including a white paper published in the IBM Journal of Research and Development.