Comprehensive End-to-End Asian Market Entry Services

Customer
EqualLogic, Inc. is a leading provider of iSCSI-based, all-inclusive storage area network (SAN) solutions that enable businesses - from Fortune 500 to small and mid-size organizations - to realize the economic benefits of consolidated, self-managing storage. With over 480 resellers and 3,200 customers around the world, EqualLogic is the leading provider of iSCSI-based SAN solutions in the world. For more information about EqualLogic, visit: www.EqualLogic.com

Challenge
As the fastest growing company in the fastest growing segment of the networked storage space, EqualLogic was really making a name for itself in the industry. With its North American business doubling each year and it’s European operations already established, EqualLogic realized that it needed to quickly round out its global presence in preparation for the company’s IPO by expanding into the strategically important and fast-growing Asia Pacific markets.

Overview of RTMAsia Solution
EqualLogic engaged RTMAsia in January of 2007 to assist in the planning and execution of an Asia market expansion covering the key markets of Japan, Greater China and Korea. During the initial phase of the market assessment, RTMAsia recommended that EqualLogic establish a subsidiary and build a direct presence in Japan in order to expand on its existing channel business. As part of RTMAsia’s comprehensive service solution, RTM’s executive team, working together with EqualLogic management, quickly recruited a high caliber team of seasoned sales and technical staff with extensive experience in the Japan storage market.

Unlike Japan, EqualLogic’s business in the Greater China and Korean markets was less developed with only a handful of small resellers, and low run-rate revenue. To meet EqualLogic’s need to quickly have a sales presence without a lot of administrative overhead, RTMAsia devised a flexible but effective China/Korea market entry mechanism for EqualLogic consisting of team of outsourced sales and technical staff dedicated to EqualLogic’s business, providing EqualLogic with instant market coverage in six cities across Greater China and Korea.

With the resources in place to facilitate business operations, RTMAsia designed and rolled out the multi-faceted SAN.Generation program, aimed at capturing the technical mindshare of technical engineers and architects of Systems Integrators, resellers and end user customers with EqualLogic’s market leading iSCSI based storage technologies. Targeting China as the pilot region for the SAN.Generation program, over 1,000 attendees from hundreds of companies were trained on EqualLogic’s technology, creating a self-propagating network of technical proponents for EqualLogic technology in the China market. Through sales lead generated from the SAN.Generation program, EqualLogic was able to expand their install base into the fast growing HDTV (High Definition TV) market segment and signed up a key OEM customer in the Chinese government sector, opening up a significant new revenue streams for the company and more than doubling their year over year revenue in the region.

CEO Quote
Asia was a key part of our market expansion strategy in 2007 and we needed to move fast. The RTMAsia team provided us with a well thought out plan of what was needed in each country and then supported a seamless execution. The entire experience of opening up our Japan subsidiary, building out an Asia team, marketing our products and training more than a thousand people in our technology was all done as an extension to our own organization. There is no doubt that working with RTMAsia has saved us time and money but more importantly, helped us to achieve our aggressive market expansion goals in the time required..

Don Bulens, CEO, EqualLogic, Inc

What RTMAsia Provided
RTMAsia provided a comprehensive set of market entry services to EqualLogic. The scope of the work performed included:

	Creation of detailed market entry plans, budgets and executive presentations
	Channel partner screening, recruiting, contract negotiations and day-to-day management of channel partners
	Deployment of a fully outsourced sales and technical staff dedicated to the client’s business
	RTM Executive Management of several of the client’s in-region employees
	Coordination of executive visits, press conferences, marketing events, campaigns and leads. Local language website development assistance
	Virtual office, staffing and bookkeeping services
	Company formation, tax and legal document filings with the authorities
	Employee recruiting, onboarding, benefits management and related services

The Results
By leveraging RTMAsia’s services, EqualLogic was able to meet their aggressive Asia market expansion goals, establishing a subsidiary in Japan and putting in place a seasoned sales and technical team within three months as well as gaining instant coverage in over 6 cities across Greater China and Korea. As a result, in the first year of RTMAsia’s involvement, revenue in has more than doubled over the previous year. This enhanced presence and success in Asia has made EqualLogic, Inc., naturally appear more valuable to investors..On November 5, 2007, Dell Corporation announced that they had signed an agreement to acquire EqualLogic for $1.4 billion in cash. Post acquisition, Dell Corporation retained RTMAsia services to ramp up their team and close the sales pipeline for the better part of one year.