ALMtoolbox has managed to reach the target audience in large enterprises through IBM’s DeveloperWorks network and social media, winning the Beacon Award for outstanding contribution to the developer’s community.
Rome, May 18th. Tamir Gefen, CEO of ALMtoolbox, won the IBM Beacon Award for outstanding contribution to DeveloperWorks, IBM’s network for developers and IT professionals. The marketing strategy of ALMtoolbox, a vendor specializing in IBM Rational plugins, focuses on reaching key position holders through social media and developing a highly targeted install base for its niche products.
Left to right: Rich Hume (General Manager, Global business partners and mid-market, IBM), Tamir Gefen (ALMtoolbox) and Jim Corgel (General manager, ISV & Developer Relations, IBM)
“The company was founded in social media,” says Mr. Gefen. “Two years ago I opened a professional blog, as a way to share knowledge and connect to other professionals working with IBM products. One night I shared a script I wrote on my blog, and was amazed at how many people downloaded it with no other marketing except my blog post. It became clear that a good solution can get a wide audience through social media tools.”
ALMtoolbox’s clients are large enterprises who have a large R&D team. Reaching administrators and managers in such organizations is considered especially difficult through traditional marketing efforts. Yet ALMtoolbox has managed to reach an install base of thousands of users in organizations such as federal agencies, Oracle, Motorola, Thales, STMicroElectronics, Ness, Comverse, and many more.
Today, ALMtoolbox markets its solutions in IBM DeveloperWorks, LinkedIn, Twitter, professional forums, and is considering entering Facebook. The company has an active blog in English: ALMtoolbox’s blog.
“The key is to reach a very specific niche and work with the community to provide value,” Mr. Gefen explains, “we don’t just develop products and drop them into the marketplace. We listen to the pains of users and administrators, and use it as a starting point for new features and products. In this way we ensure that our plugins solve real problems for real people. We have also shared new features and beta versions with connections on social media, and the feedback has been invaluable.”
ALMtoolbox has developed three productivity plugins for IBM Rational ClearCase:
ClearEnv – Automatically installs development environments in ClearCase, with a special focus on heterogeneous systems, Agile methodology, distributed environments, and more.
ClearCheck – Automatically checks database health in development environments, contributing to business continuity and risk mitigation.
CompBL – Advanced version comparison for better control of the R&D process and gathering Business Intelligence (BI) about development processes.
All products are seamlessly integrated with ClearCase environments, compliant with UNIX/ Linux and Windows, and certified by the IBM Innovation Lab.
About ALMtoolbox
ALMtoolbox provides products and services for configuration management (CM) and application life-cycle management (ALM). The company specializes in IBM Rational products and heterogeneous environments and recently won the IBM Beacon Award.
ALMtoolbox was founded in 2009 by Tamir Gefen, a recognized expert with over a decade of experience. Mr. Gefen managed CM and ALM projects at the Israeli Air Force, an international professional services company, and large enterprises.
