CEO Thought Leadership

Portworx is the container storage company enterprises trust to run mission-critical data services in production on Kubernetes. Portworx enables data availability, data security, cloud migrations and backup and disaster recovery for applications running on-premise or across clouds for Global 2000 companies.

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Challenge

Most business publications aren’t interested in deeply technical topics like containerized storage, but they do care about topics of national interest like the Pentagon’s $10B JEDI cloud contract. 

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The Mission North team was tasked with bringing Portworx out of the technological “weeds” and building up their credibility as experts on all cloud topics. To do so, the team needed to get creative and push the client to construct and express opinions about hot-button issues and trends that would attract broader media attention.

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Strategy

We launched a rapid response campaign positing that the Pentagon’s JEDI decision was a mistake, and that no large business would go with a single cloud provider for a contract and project of such size. Leveraging Portworx’s expertise in the cloud and multi-cloud computing, we drafted an opinion piece for CEO Murli Thiumale arguing against the Pentagon’s decision and placed it in The Hill. The piece furthered Portworx’s messaging that a multi-cloud strategy is better for business and positioned Murli as a thought leader on the topic. 

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Impact

As the story continued to develop, an AP reporter read Murli’s op-ed and reached out to him for comment. Their conversation resulted in an Associated Press feature on the JEDI deal that quoted Murli and was syndicated to 100+ news outlets including ABC News, The Washington Post, The Financial Times and The LA Times, reaching a potential readership of more than 64 million. Besides establishing Murli as a thought leader in cloud computing, Portworx’s sales team said prospects and customers frequently mention the story in conversations and that it sparked Portworx’s internal enthusiasm for further rapid response and bold thinking.

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