Support.com 2007 Annual Report Download - page 13

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Sales and Marketing
For our consumer offerings, we have a business development organization that establishes and manages relationships with partners through whom we make
our consumer offerings available. Our direct customer acquisition program is currently focused on online marketing and radio, as well as public relations
activities.
For our enterprise offerings, we maintain a sales organization to reach digital service providers and corporate IT departments. Our sales organization is
managed geographically in two regions: the Americas and International. Within regions, some sales representatives sell specifically to digital service providers,
some to corporate IT departments, and some to both. The enterprise marketing organization works closely with the sales organization to create programs which
build awareness of our solutions. The marketing organization uses a range of programs to build market awareness, including relationships with industry analysts,
email and relationship marketing programs, business and trade press tours, and participation in industry-specific trade shows.
Alliances
We have formed relationships with consumer-facing companies in order to expand the reach of our consumer offerings. These relationships include
retailers, digital service providers and other companies in the U.S. and Europe. Generally, these relationships are of two types: white label alliances, where we
offer our services under another brand, and referral alliances, where we offer services under the support.com brand. We have also entered into certain
relationships where we license software to other parties for use in delivery of premium technology support.
In our enterprise unit, we work closely with Customer-Premises Equipment (CPE) manufacturers and maintain an interoperability laboratory to test their
hardware products against standards developed by the DSL Forum. Certain of these firms resell our products to digital service providers. We have also formed
relationships with IT outsourcers that represent a customer base as well as a delivery option for our products.
Customers
Representative digital service providers who have purchased our products and services include: Belgacom, BellSouth, Bharti, Casema, Carphone Warehouse
(Talk Talk), Charter, Comcast, Cox, Essent Kabelcom, FastWeb, KPN, Ono, Portugal Telecom, Qwest, TDC Kabel, TDC Solutions, TDC Switzerland,
TeliaSonera, Time Warner Cable, UPC Broadband, Verizon, and other service providers worldwide. Representative companies that have licensed SupportSoft
software for corporate IT operations and customer support requirements include: ADP, Bank of America, BT, Dell, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Northrop
Grumman, Sony Electronics, Symantec, Thomson Financial and Trend Micro. Representative IT outsourcers that have purchased our products to provide
outsourced services to enterprises include: CGI, CSC, CompuCom and EDS.
Technology, Research and Development
Our enterprise software provides self-healing capabilities designed to identify, diagnose and correct potential problems prior to their impact on the user. If a
user does require assistance, our products are designed to provide an integrated approach to escalating the problem to either self-service web-based portals or to
analysts who use our products to deliver the appropriate resolution to the problem. Many of our products have been architected to function on a common
software platform which is based on a set of patented technologies.
Our enterprise technology is designed to enable our products to be extended and easily adapt to, and integrate with, varying software environments. Our
solutions support a high degree of scalability
9
Source: SUPPORTSOFT INC, 10-K, March 13, 2008