Background

A confluence of market conditions and trends across HPC, AI/ML and cloud is creating unprecedented opportunities for customers to modernize and transform their enterprises, future-proof IT investments and unlock the power of data like never before.

Since the relationship began in February 2018, Penguin Computing and Karbo Communications have worked together across a variety of PR and digital marketing initiatives. In the beginning of the relationship, Karbo Com focused on market differentiation and elevating executive thought leadership platforms. As the relationship has grown and evolved over five years, Karbo has been instrumental in establishing media and analyst relationships, supporting a company rebrand, executing a variety of digital marketing and content initiatives, developing video case studies, securing industry leading award wins, providing top-flight events support, creating a robust social media program and more.

Objectives

• Foster relationships with key industry analysts and influence Penguin Computing’s market position 
• Support market education on new product lines and help business growth
• Successfully rebrand Penguin Computing to Penguin Solutions
• Validate use cases across multiple market segments
• Execute upon multiple customer case studies through video storytelling
• Support announcements including product updates and corporate news

Execution

Results

Strategic PR work over an ongoing, multi-year relationship has resulted in more than 450 pieces of unique media coverage related to company news, product updates, partnerships, and key verticals as well as thought leadership driven bylines. Notably, the company has been ranked by industry leading analyst firm Hyperion Research as the fastest growing worldwide HPC/AI vendor in 2021 with >30% share gain, coming in at #8 on the list of top 10 vendors by market share.

Like many industry leaders, it is important for Penguin Computing to have a strong presence on social media. Karbo architected a social media strategy that highlighted unique and engaging content that featured the company as well as key industry moments. Karbo helped Penguin Computing grow their LinkedIn followers 55% between 2020 and 2021. Since the rebrand to Penguin Solutions in April 2022, Karbo has worked with global communications teams to refine social strategy and grow new LinkedIn followers organically by 4600%.

Over the years, Karbo has recommended Penguin Computing apply for prestigious industry awards including the annual HPCwire Readers’ Choice Awards, bringing home wins in The Best Use of HPC in Financial Services category in 2018 and 2020. In 2022, after a rigorous application and interview process, Penguin Computing was inducted into the Space Technology Hall of Fame alongside the Beowulf Cluster, Thomas Sterling, James Fischer and the Goddard Space Flight Center. This prestigious award is designed to recognize the life-changing technologies that have emerged from global space programs, and educate the public on the importance of these technologies as an additional return on investment for space exploration.

Karbo has also produced customer case studies that showcase the work Penguin Computing is doing with customers and partners to pave the way to the future with technology. In 2019, Karbo produced a video case study featuring Penguin Computing’s work on the Ang Lee directed film, Gemini Man. Lee’s vision for the film was ambitious: Gemini Man would feature the first convincingly human CGI character. Leveraging over 20 years of experience driving open HPC advancements, Penguin Computing curated the market’s most innovative technologies available to develop a customer-defined architecture which consisted of design, consulting, and professional services coupled with Penguin Computing’s customizable software defined storage (SDS) solution. The video case study went on to win the 2020 Gold Hermes Creative Awards and the 2020 Silver Telly Award. More recently in 2022, Karbo produced another video case study with Penguin and their partners Shell and Nvidia which showcased how the three are working together towards a future with more sustainable data centers. The video case study debuted at Supercomputing 2022.