Optaros: Market Research and Public Relations

The Bloom Group was contacted by Bob Gett and Mavis Chin, veterans of two
of the fastest-growing IT consulting and services companies of the last 15 years
(Cambridge Technology Partners and Viant). Their interest: finding a marketing
firm that could help them determine the viability of, and client needs for, consulting
and systems integration services related to open source software.

They chose The Bloom Group to conduct the market research. Led by Principal
Edwin Hastings, The Bloom Group secured and led in-person and phone interviews
with senior IT executives at 20 large companies. The Bloom Group’s analysis
of the interviews found there to be substantial interest in open source software
at most of the 20 companies—and extensive open source usage already in
a number of them.

The research, conducted in August and September, helped Gett, Chin and Dave
Gynn define the service offerings for their new firm, Optaros Inc. By December,
Optaros tapped The Bloom Group to run its PR campaign, which included an announcement
of the firm’s seed round of venture capital funding (from Charles River
Ventures and Gett). Led by Bloom Group Founding Partner Bob Buday and PR affiliates
Rimjhim Dey and Judith Jameson, the investment generated
coverage in a number of key print and online publications including: CNET News.com,
LinuxWorld, VentureWire, Network World Fusion, and searchenterpriselinux.com.

The Bloom Group also set up interviews with a number of other leading publications,
including The Wall Street Journal and extended the marketing work through the
first quarter of 2005, a time in which The Bloom Group wrote press releases and
generated publicity on a Series A investment round, new hires, and an Optaros
client project. Optaros has since been featured in San Jose Mercury-News, InformationWEEK, The Daily Deal, Boston Business Journal and Mass High-Tech.