The document discusses best practices for product management and development, particularly for hosting companies. It emphasizes adopting an iterative "Product Management 2.0" approach of continuous development, early customer feedback, and rapid releases. This allows products to evolve based on customer needs rather than rigid pre-planned development cycles. Key elements include prioritizing features, early beta testing, ongoing marketing and measurement of success based on metrics like customer satisfaction and churn. Examples of both successful and failed past product launches in hosting are provided to illustrate the approach.

1. Launch Your Product like a Pro William Toll (Director, SMB- Product Management & Marketing) [email_address] – Twitter:@NaviSiteHosts Sumeet Sabharwal (SVP, SMB Hosting) [email_address] NaviSite, Inc.

5. Product Development Lifecycle Simplified NaviSite, Inc.

6. Why do we launch new products? Customer Requests? Employee Requests? Vendor Upgrades? Competitive Alignment? Innovation Leadership? Increase Profits? Lower Churn? Because, we do? Enhance Existing Products NaviSite, Inc.

7. Why Product Management? NaviSite, Inc.

8. Does your hosting company have any of these concepts and documents? Concept Documents Road Map Full Business Case Basic Business Case Project Charter Product Requirements Documents Project Communications Plan Development Spec Documents QA Test Cases Issue Log Community Evangelist Plan Training Documents Quality Management Plan Marketing Plan Scope Change Requests Project Board Architecture Diagram RFPs SWOT Diagrams NaviSite, Inc.

10. Example #1: Success - DIY, WYSIWYG In 1999 and 2000 the Shared Web Hosting space was dominated by Verio, ValueWeb, Interland, Pipex, and several hundred smaller companies. Shared Hosting offerings were marketed based on price and specs – somewhat like they are today – except that the average MRR was $19.95 to $49.95. The primary buyer was a Web designer, advertising agency or HTML expert. NaviSite, Inc. Customer Request Easier to use, SMB DIY Employee Request Easier to support, SMB DIY Market Leadership Easy to use web design software, SMB DIY Reduce Churn Provide Value, SMB DIY

13. Product Management NaviSite, Inc.

14. Traditional Product Development NaviSite, Inc.

16. Example #2:Failure Clustered Shared Hosting In 2004 shared Web hosting was now mainstream and several giant customer bases were in place at companies like Verio, Affinity, 1&1, GoDaddy, Interland. Several providers believed that a path to profitable success was to build a monolitic clustered shared hosting platform that would meet the need for both growth and operational stability. Several platforms never launched and others died early. NaviSite, Inc. Customer Request Not met – did not support growing requests for PHP, .NET, expanded one-click installs Employee Request Not met – complicated for operations, frustration for support. Market Leadership Failure – simpler players grew faster – Lunar Pages, HostGator, iPower, Dream Host Reduce Churn Increased Churn! – applications were not supported. Widespread downtime.

19. Product Management 2.0 NaviSite, Inc.

20. Product Management 2.0 NaviSite, Inc.

21. Essential Product Management 2.0 Elements NaviSite, Inc.

28. Example #3: Successful Focused Hosters From 2002 to 2007 several smaller hosting and application specific niche providers (Shared, VPS, Dedicated) outpaced their peers by focusing on a specific market segment: .NET Hosting, PHP Hosting, Blog Hosting, eCommerce hosting, Exchange hosting. NaviSite, Inc. Customer Request Exceeded Innovation Focused, and paced with customer & vendors needs and capabilities Increase Profits Lower Marketing & Operational Costs Reduce Churn Unique, fully functional offering is difficult to leave.

29. Please Complete Survey! Session Track: Marketing & Sales Session Title: Launch Products Like A Pro William Toll (Director, SMB- Product Management & Marketing) [email_address] – Twitter:@NaviSiteHosts Sumeet Sabharwal (SVP, SMB Hosting) [email_address] NaviSite, Inc.