TRACK 1 SESSIONS
Thursday, May 24, 2007

Product Road Map Management and Execution
Richard Heitmann, VP Product Management EVault

Creating and executing on a strategic product road map is always challenging. From entrepreneurial companies, to small family owned business, to large publicly traded companies, there is no single approach that will lead to success. In this session we'll discuss the differences and how to handle the challenges that are unique to each type of business.

Richard Heitmann has over 15 years of experience in marketing, program management, and engineering roles in enterprise software, security, and data protection. At EVault, Richard is responsible for setting overall product strategy and bringing EVault's data protection products and services to market. At WatchGuard, Richard was responsible for all inbound and outbound product marketing for Internet security appliances and services, and prior to that, Richard held various engineering and program management roles at Onyx Software.

Online Content is King
Gopal Shenoy, Strategic Marketing Manager, SolidWorks Corp.

For software companies, the Internet has provided a marketing Mecca where the options are infinite. A strong Web site with compelling content is now considered table stakes. If companies want to attract customers, partners and even the media, the site has to be visually appealing, easy to use, and loaded with good information. Technological advances have brought other types of content such as video and podcasts to the fore, giving companies more creative options for conveying important messages about their products, services and customer successes. There is no question that online content is king. It’s just a question of what content will help your objectives and how best to create that content. This session will highlight case history lessons learned at SolidWorks Corp., a market leader in 3D computer-added design software.

Gopal Shenoy is Strategic Marketing Manager for content solutions at SolidWorks, which is ranked at No. 127 on the 2006 Software 500 from Software Magazine. He manages the product direction for the content offerings from SolidWorks. Meeting with customers in understanding how SolidWorks products can be made better to allow them to design better products remains his passion. He has been at SolidWorks for over ten years. He has a MS degree in Software Engineering from Brandeis University and a MS degree in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Gopal has presented at the Software Management Perspectives Conference 2005, and was scheduled to speak at PDMA’s Voice of the Customer Conference 2006 in San Diego in December 2006.

Ideas on Packaging Professional Services for Software Sales
Jennifer Chang, Strategic Programs — Consulting Service Offering Manager, Oracle USA

With the ever-growing market demand on driving effective returns on implementing new software solutions, many traditional software companies have realized the importance of packaging effective professional services to compliment their technology. What are the considerations to have when you start down this journey? Experiences around the following areas will be shared: Utilization of available internal resources, 'partner' ecosystem, offshore resources, and subcontracting; 'product' design, development, and solution marketing concepts; and lastly customer feedback, satisfaction, and references.

Ms. Chang is a veteran in the software and management consulting industries with more than 10 years of experience. Her professional background includes management consulting with Deloitte Consulting, business development with Corio, product management and marketing with Ariba, and now strategic programs development with Oracle USA responsible for effective service offering development. Her interest lies in how to best create market differentiation with new product introduction and marketing with quantifiable results. Ms. Chang has a BA from UC Berkeley in Psychology and currently an EMBA student at Cornell University.

TRACK 1 SESSIONS
Friday, May 25, 2007

Assessing and Managing Risks of Product Porfolios
Ruedi Klein, Product Portfolio Manager, Lucent Technologies

This talk will outline the key elements of risk assessment and management within the context of product portfolio management by extending the standard investment portfolio management framework and answering the following questions:

• How to tie Risk Assessments to Portfolio Prioritization?
• Risk vs. Reward or Return, Balance, and Strategy Alignment?
• Is there an 'Efficient Frontier' for New Product Portfolios?
• What are appropriate Measures of Risk?
• How to integrate Risk Assessments for Portfolio and Project Management?

Ruedi Klein has been involved in new product development for over a decade. In his current role as Product Portfolio Manager at Lucent Technologies he is using his experience to evaluate new product project proposals and provide recommendations covering resource allocation, pricing, and risk management.

Ruedi joined Lucent Technologies in 1997 as a process consultant in Bell Laboratories focusing on improving product development practices and shortening product development intervals in the business units. Previously, at Matsushita Electric Works, in Osaka, Japan, he researched modulation and coding schemes for mobile communication systems and wireless LANs using system level simulation tools.

Ruedi holds a Diplom Ingenieur degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Technology Aachen, Germany, and an MBA from Cornell University. He is a member of IEEE, PMI, and VDI (Society of German Engineers). He is currently VP of Chapter Development and Management for the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) and a certified New Product Development Professional (NPDP) since 2001.

Maintaining Product Marketing Momentum in the Midst of a Merger
Tom Chamberlain, Director, Business Process Marketing, Aspect Software

In September 2005, the $1 billion merger of Aspect Communications and Concerto Software created the largest company in the world specializing in next-generation products and services for in-house and outsourced contact centers. The new company, Aspect Software, is a single, privately-owned business-communications-solutions powerhouse with 30 years of experience in predictive dialing, automatic call distribution, workforce management, interactive voice response and multi-channel contact. This session will explore the specific challenges involved in maintaining product marketing momentum in the midst of a merger – focusing on how the organization worked to ensure a cohesive, unified marketing strategy as a number of product lines previously sold by separate vendors were being integrated under the Aspect Software brand.

As the director of business process marketing for customer service at Aspect Software, Thomas Chamberlain is responsible for ensuring seamless integration between Aspect Software products and services with the mission-critical business processes of the company’s more than 5,000 customers.

As an expert in customer service, Tom is also responsible for working closely with marketing to determine messaging to support Aspect Software’s philosophy and support of the customer service business process. He believes that the core value that Aspect Software offers to companies in the customer service industry is to provide products and services that help solidify business relationships with customers while delivering results and minimizing waste. In addition, he provides strategic involvement with sales customer service opportunities.

As a part of this role, Tom evaluates companies, markets and technologies to determine synergies that will help Aspect Software most effectively serve the contact center market. Thomas has more than 23 years of contact center experience, including management and staff positions in the Corporate Planning, Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service organizations for Aspect Software.

Tom joined Aspect Software in 1988. During his 19 years with the company, Tom has held a wide variety of management and staff positions with increasing responsibilities in the Sales, Marketing and Customer Service organizations. Tom led teams that rolled out the first production systems for Aspect® Unison® Predictive Dialer and established a sales presence for Aspect® Professional Services.

He came to Aspect Software from Citigroup where he was an integration specialist. In this role, Tom was a member of the assessment team evaluating new contact center technologies and also was responsible for the design, programming and maintenance of loan applications for Citibank’s Credit Renewal program.

Merging Product Management and Marketing
Into a Single Function
James Morehead, VP Product Management and Marketing, SupportSoft

The classic split of industrial marketing responsibilities has inbound product management and outbound product marketing split in separate, but aligned groups. Product Management is more tightly aligned with Engineering and Product Marketing more tightly aligned with sales and corporate marketing. Some companies go one step further and have product marketing separate from industry and/or solutions marketing functions. This session will look at the experience of SupportSoft where product management and marketing are combined as a single function - the benefits and challenges.

This session will cover:

• Key constituents for the integrated Product Management and Marketing resource
• Benefits of the unified inbound/outbound resource — the Credibility Edge
• Tradeoffs — how to balance inbound and outbound requirements
• Hiring — what to look for — key skills covering both inbound & outbound functions

James Morehead joined SupportSoft in October 2003 and is currently Vice President – Product Management and Marketing. James leads a team responsible for crafting and evangelizing SupportSoft’s strategy and product direction for SupportSoft’s target markets (including broadband, video and mobile service providers as well as large enterprises).

Prior to joining SupportSoft, James spent nearly four years leading Portal Software’s Solutions Marketing team for key markets including broadband, wireless, wireline, digital media and online content. James also spent eight years with Nortel Networks primarily in Nortel’s Wireless Networks business unit with roles in strategic marketing, sales and network engineering as well as in Nortel’s Information Technology team, which focused on finance systems.

As a Computer Engineering graduate from the University of Waterloo (Canada), James started his career as a real-time software engineer. James then went on to complete his MBA at the University of Toronto, Canada. Additionally, he has participated in Consumer Marketing Strategy courses at the Kellogg Business School at Northwestern University. He is a frequent media source and a published author.

Information Supply Chain: Aligning Diverse Teams
to Minimize Time-to-Revenue for High-Tech Products
Saeed Khan, VP Product Management, Avokia Inc.

Why is it so hard to keep development, marketing, and sales aligned? Each team speaks its own language and needs a different kind of information to take action and make timely decisions. Each team has developed coping strategies (eg: wiki, status meetings, email, spreadsheets), yet these only address symptoms, not the root cause of the problem - the complex and dynamic information and the different needs of information consumers. The information is more layered and complex than the coping strategies, and the industry lacks an effective and efficient way to keep teams in sync. Simply "working harder" will not produce the desired results. To achieve alignment, companies must take a new look at the problem and understand that information, processes, decisions, and teams are parts of an Information Supply Chain that needs to be optimized. In this session, learn how to discover your firm's Information Supply Chain and leverage it to help you regain alignment and optimize time-to-revenue.

Saeed is a 20-year veteran of the software industry with deep experience in product management, product marketing, development, and education. He has managed market-leading products in a number of segments including data integration, data visualization and enterprise application development. He brings hands on experience in enterprise infrastructure and database related software systems, most recently at Redwood City, CA based Informatica. Saeed has managed all phases of the product lifecycle, from initial conception through early customer acquisition, revenue growth, profit development and end-of-life. Prior to Informatica, he held key product management positions at General Magic, KL Group (acquired by Quest Software), and Intelliseek (now Neilsen BuzzMetrics). Saeed’s professional approach to product management is also illustrated in his contributions to publications such as ProductMarketing.com magazine.