This week, I
had the opportunity to interview Rebecca Power, the
Director of Marketing at Numecent, Inc. Rebecca has an
extensive background of marketing and business development for various enterprise
technologies, but surprisingly, her formal education did not include computer
science. That minor detail hasn't seemed to hold Rebecca back. The business-minded marketing leader is
preparing for her second year of the Citrix Summit conference in
January to educate Citrix
partners and spread the word about her company's technology and its role in
digital transformation of the enterprise.
VMblog: How has your stance on digital
transformation in the enterprise been influenced by your professional marketing
experience?
Rebecca Power: I am a strong advocate of the shift toward
enterprise mobility and the modern desktop.
My position builds upon my experiences working on cross-departmental and
multi-geographical teams within and across organizations. People have other
responsibilities in life which require them to be in different places at
different times, and smart organizations are empowering their employees (and
saving money on real estate) by supporting a remote workforce.
As a marketing professional, I have
firsthand experience as an end-user of SaaS, dependent upon the digital
transformation movement. I utilize over
50 Cloud-based software tools on any given day, so I understand that the quick
adoption of modern technological advances is imperative to staying ahead of the
curve and maximizing collaboration and productivity across teams.
VMblog: What resources have been most helpful getting
you up to speed on the technology at Numecent?
Power: I work
with incredibly intelligent and helpful colleagues who have many years of
experience as solutions architects, software developers, and computer scientists.
When I began my current role, I shadowed our Director of Solutions and
Partners, Tony Hughes, during nearly every one of his customer interactions. I
literally typed in everything he said in OneNote. I would revisit the notes and
ask questions until I had a good understanding of what problems our company's
technology could solve for enterprises tackling digital transformation
projects.
Several of the "Aha!" moments in my
current role that have come from collaborating with members of our engineering
team to produce technical articles and illustrations which explain how our
technology works, how it integrates with other technologies, and how there is
nothing else quite like it. Our development, support, and quality assurance
teams have produced a library of well-written product documentation which has
been another great resource available to me.
VMblog: What external resources have been most
helpful to you as a marketing leader responsible for positioning Numecent's technology
in the enterprise modernization marketplace?
Power: Many fantastic turnkey marketing resources
are available to Numecent through
Microsoft and Citrix, as benefits
of their partner programs. Microsoft provides several Go-To-Market Programs and
marketing frameworks for their partners. As a Gold
Microsoft Partner,
Numecent is provided with a portal to access customized, co-branded content and
campaigns covering a variety of topics for a variety of distribution channels. Weekly online office hours are offered as part
of the Microsoft's SureStep initiative to educate partners on industry trends
and marketing tools.
As a provider of Citrix Ready
certified technology, Numecent has also benefited from the turnkey marketing
resources provided through Citrix Partner Program. Citrix recently introduced a digital
marketing platform, Citrix MarketingIQ, which
creates co-branded marketing materials on various industry topics which can be
printed or distributed via email, social media, or web. This year, Citrix is
introducing a Marketing
Track of sessions at Citrix Summit '19 for marketing professionals,
which I'm really excited about.
VMblog: In your own words, what does Numecent's
technology do and what problem does it solve?
Power: Numecent's technology enables the most complex legacy apps to run in a modern
environment by assigning unique dispositions for isolating or integrating
software assets and the end user's operating system. Numecent's technology
extends the life of older, line-of-business, "legacy" apps as modern computing
environments evolve, solving the application compatibility problem faced by
many companies. For the IT professional, this eliminates the time-consuming
requirement of re-packaging applications for deployment in different
environments. What this means for an enterprise is substantial cost savings by
eliminating the need to upgrade, repurchase, repackage, or rebuild expensive homegrown
and legacy software when migrating to a new Windows environment.
VMblog: How do you differentiate Numecent's
technology from application virtualization?
Power: Numecent's technology can address the
compatibility issues of apps requiring kernel-level access to the OS, in
addition to user-mode apps requiring isolation. Application virtualization only
addresses user-mode apps.
VMblog: Some technology companies believe it is
counter-intuitive to hire a marketing leader without a computer science
background. What is your take?
Power: Marketing for any industry, technical
or non-technical, requires extensive research and understanding to be
successful. While most highly skilled
computer science engineers will have a wealth of knowledge surrounding the
capabilities and boundaries of the technologies they develop for commercial
use, they often appreciate and benefit from diverse ideas which introduce
alternative perspectives for evolving solutions.
VMblog: Are there any challenges you've faced as a
B2B technology marketing professional without a "technical" background?
Power: The most obvious challenge is getting
up to speed on the terms and capabilities of the older and emerging
technologies. I've always enjoyed
figuring out how things work and translating technical jargon into the
vernacular that resonates best with the appropriate audiences. When marketing
enterprise technology, there are a wide range of unique personas to address:
end-users, influencers, thought leaders, system administrators, business
developers, software developers, procurement managers, decision makers, and
more. It's important to continuously
adapt and evolve messaging.
VMblog: Do you have any recommendations for
marketers of enterprise technology?
Power: The information surrounding digital
transformation in the enterprise is always evolving so it's important to stay
on top of it. Read your industry
influencers' blogs and engage with them in conversations and banter about
relevant technology topics on social media. My personal go-to favorites for my
research at Numecent: @appcompatguy, @rorymon, @VMblog, and
@xenappblog,
to name a few. Microsoft's Tech Community
is also a great resource, filled with information. Join user groups. Join forces with your
partners and customers. Network! Always be listening, learning, improving, and
making connections. And of course, be
sure to embrace the digital transformation of marketing!
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For more information on enterprise
technology marketing strategies or opportunities to add Numecent technology to
your stack of digital transformation and desktop modernization solutions,
contact Rebecca Power.