The Joy of the Product Launch
Well, so much for blogging more regularly. It's not that potential topics don't come to mind or that items in the news don't set that little light bulb off over my head. In fact, I've got a backlog of stories, articles, press releases and the such that I thought would make great topics. I just never to seem to get back around to them after I've tucked them away for safekeeping.
Part of the problem is that other things seem to get in the way -- things like major product launches. And since I pretty much gave it away in the title, you can probably guess that we just put the finishing touches on a product launch that introduced Artix Registry/Repository and helped move the Artix product family from just an ESB to a more comprehensive suite of SOA infrastructure products.
I've written here about how great it is for PR people to have really solid spokespeople on whom they can rely. And this most recent launch provided even more evidence of that. I was able to leverage a few different folks for this particular announcement and all did a fantastic job communicating the message and getting some pretty good sound bites into print. Some folks reading this may also read Eric Newcomer's blog and know a little bit about him. His interview with Rich Seeley of SearchWebServices produced a great article that you can check out here. Rich is a fantastic reporter, really knows his stuff and is great to work with.
Our Chief Scientist and co-founder Sean Baker, being "stationed" in the Dublin, Ireland HQ, took the European leg of the tour. I sent him out into the wilds of Milan, Paris and Munich to talk up the product and why we believe that an active Registry/Repository product is crucial to effective SOA governance. By all accounts, he did a great job. I need to rely on our European PR agencies to tell me if the coverage is good or bad, since I don't speak French or Italian, and my schoolboy German is really only strong enough to order dinner. We did however set up some time when Sean was in Paris to talk with James Niccolai, who writes for IDG News. The resulting story is currently making its way across several IDG publications.
Stephanos Bacon, our vp of product development helped set the stage for this launch with a great Guest Commentary published earlier this month at SearchWebServices. He also handled the briefing with Tony Baer of Datamonitor's Computerwire. I'd link to the actual story, but you'd need to register and pay your $2 for access. Take it from me, Steph gave a great interview.
Hopefully, with this launch behind me, and the acquisition of C24 taken care of (which by the way added some really cool data services capabilities to Artix), I'll find (read make) the time to post here a little more consistently.