Reflections on Attachmate

April 20, 2015
By Communiqué PR staff

For the past seven years, we have had the pleasure of working with Attachmate, one of the world’s most established software brands. Attachmate’s business is rooted in providing technologies that help companies extend their investments in mainframes and other host data systems. While terms like “terminal emulation,” “DMSII” and “DoD PKI” were new to us when we first started with Attachmate, they quickly became part of our regular vocabulary.

With a 30+ year history in the software industry, the company counts among its customers 69% of the Fortune Global 500, including the top financial institutions, airlines and healthcare organizations. Anytime you use an ATM or make an airline reservation, chances are a mainframe and Attachmate’s products are working behind the scenes.

When we began our engagement with Attachmate our initial PR objectives were to help increase visibility and drive awareness for the company with its existing customers, develop new and existing relationships with research analysts, and establish thought leadership. As enterprise trends like BYOD have evolved and gained traction, along the way we’ve also had the opportunity to help Attachmate introduce new mobile and cloud technologies.

Recently, Micro Focus and The Attachmate Group (Attachmate’s parent company) announced the completion of their merger and their plans to combine the various product lines under one Micro Focus portfolio. As we wind down our engagement with Attachmate, we thought it would be a great time to recap the strategies we employed to help Attachmate meet its objectives and the results we’ve garnered over the past seven years:

Media Relations: Using a combination of company news, proactive trend pitches and newsjacking, Communiqué secured hundreds of articles in publications including Computerworld, eWeek, InformationWeek, Network World, IBM Systems Magazine, IT Jungle, Database Trends and Applications, and SD Times.

Contributed Content: Communiqué worked with Attachmate’s executives and product managers to develop and place more than 30 bylines in outlets including VentureBeat, Mobile Enterprise, Data Center Journal, WIRED Innovation Insights and z/Journal. The bylines covered a broad range of topics affecting enterprises and IT – from the impact of shadow IT, to technology gaps that prevent workers from achieving true mobile productivity. In addition, Communiqué drafted numerous blog posts on behalf of the product team and established syndication arrangements for Attachmate’s blogs with Business2Community and SYS-CON Media.

Analyst Relations: Industry analysts can have a huge influence on IT purchasing decisions and one of Attachmate’s key objectives was to stay top of mind with influencers at the major research firms. To accomplish this we built an analyst relations program that included regular briefings with key analysts and quarterly emails to ensure they were updated regularly in between formal briefings. We also ensured that analysts were pre-briefed ahead of major product and strategy announcements to secure them as references for our broader media relations efforts.

Social Media: Communiqué worked closely with Attachmate to develop its social media strategy and to establish its social media pages. Communiqué also served as Attachmate’s day-to-day social media manager, driving engagement with its followers across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. Attachmate’s social media presence and engagement have grown steadily with an average year-over-year growth in followers of 42%.

We look forward to hearing more about the combined Attachmate/Micro Focus company and wish all the best to the team!

For additional insight into our work for Attachmate, please check out these other posts:

Attachmate Secures Window 7 Logo