Vice President of (Software) Appliances
Five years ago I was running marketing and strategic alliances for a large software consulting organization. My boss, a former IBM executive, walked into my office one day holding a letter addressed to him, the “Vice President of Sales and Appliances”. We laughed and laughed. The jokes continued for weeks about Ken Chodnicki being in charge of the office refrigerator, toaster and dishwasher. (Ken, if you’re reading this I’m sure you are chuckling.)
Today I spent 6 hours with the leadership team of my current company, rPath , discussing our marketing messages. When the company was founded one year ago and adopted the tagline “The Software Appliance Company”, the term software appliances still sounded a bit ridiculous in every day conversation — just like it did five years ago. Last week the analyst organization IDC predicted software appliances will be a “household word” in 2007.
So just as we have vice presidents of information technology, systems management, product development, engineering, and everything else under the sun…maybe a vice president of appliances isn’t so inconceivable anymore. I look forward to seeing the first job posting!
- Melissa
