Abhi Talwalkar

How are you marketing to customers and shareholders?

You can’t recover from a downturn with a hollow pipeline of products in technology,” says Abhi Talwalkar, president and CEO of LSI Corp. (LSI), a storage and networking solutions company based in Milpitas, Calif., that reported 2008 revenues of $2.7 billion. In fact, “the pipeline we have now is the richest we’ve ever had,” he says, and includes next-generation storage systems, hard-disk-drive technologies and network processors.

Talwalkar says it’s important to play offense in a difficult economic climate. “When talking with investors, we’re driving home two points,” he says. “The first is that they don’t have to worry about LSI’s solvency or whether we’ll be around in two years or 10. The second is that we have customer commitments for our products and solutions that will provide strong top-line growth over the next few years.”

“You can't recover from a downturn with a hollow pipeline of products in technology. The pipeline we have now is the richest we’ve ever had.”

Marketing itself as a company that can meet even more of its customers’ needs is also key for LSI. For example, LSI can offer its networking customers the hardware and software necessary to handle voice and video traffic, network security, and advanced network traffic management and processing. Most of LSI’s competitors, Talwalkar says, focus on only one of these areas. “It gives our customers the advantage of a ‘one neck to choke’ approach and a lower cost of ownership,” he says, “while giving us a bigger piece of the business.”