StartUp Strategy Formation

Participate and Lead in Standards Meetings

Situation: Netcell Corporation, a Storage Processor Company, needed to define a next generation device and to participate in the standards industry process to lower the risk of the product definition. The company needed to join and participate in SATA IO, PCI SIG for PCIe and T13 for the ATA/ATAPI standards efforts.

Problem: They had insufficient internal resources to complete the standards participation, while keeping R&D on track.

Solution: Join the Marketing Group of SATA IO and participate to insure NetCell marketing efforts were on target. Join the Digital Working Group of SATA IO participate to insure all logical SATA compliance was maintained. Join the Cables and Connectors Group of SATA IO and participate to insure the connector uses were on track for Netcell. Join the PCI SIG and get PCIe specification for Engineering designs. Join and participate in the T13 group and feedback implications to engineering about product features. Hold bi-monthly standards update meetings for Engineering Management.

Benefit: We gave a talk at CES/ETF for the SATA IO organization to evangelize the eSATA technology for Netcell. We managed the website for the SATA IO group as part of the Marketing Group. We helped drive the eSATA feature and launch plan for the storage industry. We wrote whitepapers for the SATA IO group for eSATA. We started the effort for a low cost 4 lane eSATA cable and connector. Through conducting regular standards update meetings, the key engineering resources had the right specification to lower the risk of the next device and lower the risk for software layers to the product. The technical product roadmap and feature rollout was confirmed as part of this effort. Many important relationships were established to provide strategic value to Netcell.