NetApp launched an online community to support its new branding initiative and connect employees, customers, and partners. It chose the Jive platform for its ease of use, integrated social features, and hosting options. The NetApp community saw rapid adoption with over 9,000 members from 100 countries participating in discussions, sharing knowledge. The community helped accelerate NetApp's branding goals and exceeded expectations by 1,200%.

1. © 2010 Jive Software. All rights reserved.
How do you deploy an online community that
reflects a new brand that you are in the middle
of developing? Select the right platform, leverage
people who have done it before, have the solution
hosted to mitigate risk, and collaborate closely
with stakeholders.
NetApp is an industry-leading
provider of storage and data
management solutions. It has a
presence in over 100 countries,
thousands of customers, and a
culture of innovation, technology
leadership, and customer success.
NetApp solutions deliver value, speed,
and efficiency to their customers;
and its web experience includes a
network of over 2,200 partners.
Building a connected brand with
Social Business Software
customercasestudy

2. © 2010 Jive Software. All rights reserved.
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Brand awareness by connecting employees,
customers, and partners
In late 2007 NetApp started a branding initiative with three
primary objectives:
• Clearly communicate who they are and what they do
• Reach beyond existing customers and traditional
technology audiences
• Collaborate on an on-going basis with employees, partners,
and customers
NetApp conducted extensive studies and surveyed thousands
of customers, partners, and technology experts. The majority of
respondents stated that they wanted an interactive community
to facilitate the sharing of knowledge around product,
technology, and business concerns.
The launch of the new brand was scheduled for March of 2008
through a global campaign that included major advertising
and a redesigned website.
One portion of the redesigned website and branding effort
included the creation of an online community. Due to the
initiative’s aggressive schedule, NetApp needed a comprehensive
community platform that could easily match the company’s new
branding efforts. NetApp expected the following benefits from
its community offering:
• Accelerate the branding initiative
• Enable technical discussions and collaboration
• Connect global teams and user groups
• Centralize access to documentation
• Leverage Web 2.0 technologies in the NetApp web experience
“Engaging in active online conversations across the enterprise
value chain is a must for any brand that wants to be relevant
and competitive.”
Tracy Hansen, Senior Director of Corporate Marketing, NetApp
Key highlights
Industry: Technology
Business opportunity: Building a connected brand—
employees, customers, partners, experts
Solution: Jive Social Business Software powers the
NetApp Community
Results and benefits: Thousands of community members
across 100 countries. Exceeded adoption expectations
by 1,200%. Accelerated global branding initiative.

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Why Jive?
NetApp chose Jive for the following reasons:
• Ease of use ensuring rapid adoption: “People will not
participate if it’s not super intuitive.”
• Integrated Web 2.0 technologies: one-stop shop for wikis,
blogs, discussions, and people
• Flexible platform: reflects the NetApp brand and seamlessly
integrates NetApp’s web experience
• Open API to integrate with other systems: critical for single
sign-on (SSO) requirements
To accelerate the implementation, NetApp decided to have the
community fully hosted by Jive. The utilization of experienced
consultants from Jive further accelerated the deployment of
the community. Meanwhile, NetApp used Jive internally to
collaborate on the development of the new brand.
NetApp community stats
Community adoption and participation far exceeded
NetApp’s expectations:
• Over 9,000 registered users from 100 countries around the
world in 8 months
• 78% of community users are external (customers, partners,
technology experts)
• Over 900 discussions
• Over 50,000 views of popular discussions and documents
Key ingredients for community success
To ensure the success and adoption of the community, NetApp
focused on four key areas:
• Executive sponsorship: to make embracing the community
part of the company culture.
• Forum moderators and content creators: to provide
exceptional thought leadership (this is not a level-one
support function).
• Dedicated community manager: to constantly monitor
and feed the needs of the community and to quickly identify
and exploit new opportunities.
• Monitoring: to ensure that open questions get answered
and escalated if necessary.
“It took two months to go live instead of the six months we planned.
Jive’s hosting and professional services played a key role in the
accelerated deployment.”
John Summers, Community Manager, NetApp

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jive software 325 lytton avenue, palo alto, ca 94301 o 1.877.495.3700 f 1.503.961.1047 + 1.503.972.6143
Jive. First in Social Business.
Jive is the largest and fastest-growing independent Social Business Software company in the world.
For more information, visit www.jivesoftware.com.
Jive at work
NetApp employees continue to post a large volume of critical
content and answer both technical and business questions.
Users and competitive partners are helping each other succeed
in their NetApp deployments. And NetApp’s community is
helping to deliver upon the objectives of the company’s branding
initiative:
• Engaged a broader audience in both technical and
business discussions
• Expanded brand awareness and loyalty
• Tapped into a much richer pool of ideas that help drive
company and product priorities
This is possible thanks to the ability of the NetApp community to:
• Connect people—customers, partners, and employees
• Engage in discussions and support user groups
• Share information—best practices, documentation,
code, downloads
• Share news—company, products, events
• Solve problems—leverage the community of experts
to answer questions
• Spawn on-going discussions from newsletter articles (instead
of one-way communications)
• Establish a forum for customers and partners to continually
provide feedback
What’s next?
Building on the initial community success, NetApp has now
deployed both a successful support community as well
as an internal collaboration community called NetApp Live.
Additional areas of future community growth include building
collaborative workspaces for partners and expanding the
community to include partner-specific discussion areas.
“WOW…what an outstanding answer. Adam, I am very appreciative
of this detailed answer. It really addresses my question perfectly.
Thanks for taking the time to answer so well.”
Steve, NetApp Community Member
“Community adoption and activity
has exceeded our expectations
by 1,200%.”
Carrie Rushing,
Sr. Manager of Corporate Marketing, NetApp