Case Study: Siemens IT Solutions And Services Successfully Positions A Community Cloud

Cloud computing has become the dominant theme of the marketing campaigns of many infrastructure outsourcing and services providers. Siemens IT Solutions and Services (SIS) — one of the largest European-based service providers — felt challenged by the aggressive cloud marketing of its North American competitors. But with a customer base that mostly consists of rather conservative enterprises across Europe, SIS had to carefully balance the desire to position the innovative potential of the cloud and the need to convince conservative enterprise stakeholders of the tangible business value that the cloud can provide. The cloud positioning that SIS has thus created, initially for the media industry, represents a best practice for how vendor marketing professionals can develop a cloud story — in this case, around the concept of a community cloud, which targets different client stakeholders. The key success factor of this positioning example is SIS's use of a clear business message to educate customers about the cloud rather than confuse them by using fuzzy marketing language.