Competitive Analysis Manager: Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.

Competitive Analysis Manager - SAN

This is the product marketing opening for competitive analysis / intelligence for Brocade’s >$1B SAN business. The person will serve as the owner for materials, messaging, programs, and structure & processes for SAN competitive material. This person will be the lead person within Brocade on competitive response, working with product management, and managing technical marketing fulfillment.

Job Description:

This role is a key strategic position Brocade’s largest business segment. In this role, you will be responsible for competitive response, competitive programs and competitive materials for Brocade’s SAN Business. You will be working cross-functionally to ensure that we have great competitive information and positioning for all products and solutions in our core business, and own the process of responding quickly to maximize opportunities with press/analysts/customers.

Responsibilities include working with Product Management, Technical Marketing, and Sales to catalog requirements and opportunities, and manage execution against them. This includes tracking press and analyst reports and financial data on our competitors, preparing hard-hitting competitive materials for our sales force, educating and helping our sales force respond to competitive situations and creating effective marketing programs to highlight our competitive differentiation. In this role, you will work with Sales, channel partners, major OEMs, system integrators, and end users to understand customer pain points and develop effective ways to market and sell Brocade’s solutions.

· Proactively gather information on competing products, including detailed functionality and release dates of understand, confirm and authoritatively negate competitors claims via documentation and testing

· Work with product managers and product marketing managers to identify the most compelling competitive differentiation for our products

· Track, report, and influence market share reports; track our competitors, their products, their go-to-market strategies and their financial and market performance

· Model each competitor’s strategy, key success factors and game-play potential future moves; identify opportunities to enhance our competitive differentiation through product or business strategy

· Coordinate in depth lab testing of competitive equipment, as well as Brocade equipment

· Generate, maintain and update competitive collateral, both for consumption by Brocade Sales and partners, but also for customers and public reference

· Serve as primary presenter of competitive material to all audiences

· Deliver main-tent and breakout track presentation sessions to both sales and technical system engineer audiences at sales meetings and for recorded sales training videos

· Consult with escalated sales engagements directly with the sales team and the customer, responding “on the fly” depending on customer reaction and stated misinformation

· Enter into constructive conversations with potentially defensive and combative customers and/or press & analysts

· Publish competitive reports and competitive positioning in response to news from competitors

Required Qualifications:

· Burning competitive spirit & very strong self-confidence

· Polished communication skills, with influential writing and presentation abilities

· Background in or exposure to business competitive intelligence and/or technical marketing competitive analysis

· Minimum 5-7 years in outbound Product Marketing or Technical Marketing with responsibility for storage software products or storage products for Enterprise customers

· BS/BA in IT or Engineering, MBA preferred

· Technical expertise in enterprise data center environments, foundation in systems and storage

· Desire to learn the technical details of Brocade products and solutions and those of competing companies

· Expertise in marketing products distributed primarily via indirect channels

Preferred:

This person should have direct, hands-on experience associated with Enterprise data center solutions for networking and/or storage. Specific preferred knowledge areas include data center environmentals, server and storage consolidation, network architecture, data migration and mobility, and business continuity / disaster recovery. Additionally they will have some understanding of. Knowledge of Mainframe environments and solutions is a plus.