Archive for the ‘Omniture’ Category

Omniture gets new toys

February 4, 2008

So you had all heard the news and many of us blogged about it right away: Omniture acquired Visual Sciences for an amount equal to half the GDP of a small African country, but I digress 😉

The convenient truth (that no one in the world of vendor partners will admit to) is this: it’s going to be a hell of a lot easier to market SiteCatalyst-class and Discover-class solutions, without having to have our clients choose between Omniture and Visual Sciences.

Let us look in detail at the new array of solutions being offered by the Jolly Green Giant (ho ho ho):

“Traditional” Omniture solutions:

  • Omniture SiteCatalyst: with version 14 coming soon, this is undoubtedly the established standard for web analytics reporting. No surprise here.
  • Omniture Discover: the Java-based 3D data exploration module that makes web data mining a breeze (notice how I bolded ‘web data’)
  • Omniture Genesis: the hub module that ties together data from other solution partners for integration into SiteCatalyst
  • Omniture TouchClarity: the BT (behavioral targeting) module
  • Omniture Offermatica: the MVT (multi variable testing) module
  • Omniture SearchCenter: the bid management tool (to bid on keyword auctions)

Rebranded former Visual Sciences solutions:

  • HBX becomes… *drumroll* … SiteCatalyst HBX! As you can imagine, Omniture will no longer take on new HBX clients but will support existing customers until they eventually migrate to “regular” SiteCatalyst.
  • Visual Site, Visual Sale, Visual Bid and Visual Search… Wellthey’re going the way of HBX so wait and see…
  • Visual Workstation becomes … Discover On Premises! So far, everyone I have talked to agrees that the rebranding is misleading. Discover On Premises suggests that the product offers the same exploration capabilities as “regular” Discover but with the ability to host the solution in-house. Now when I bolded “web data” earlier, it was to emphasize the fact that Discover On Premises handles all sorts of marketing information: both web and offline data.

What about Platform 5 you ask? that’ s a question for a follow-up post 🙂

In the meantime, please leave your consitructive comments at the beep 🙂

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Omniture, Thoughts and Ideas, Visual Sciences, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Industry News | Comments Off on Omniture gets new toys

Rétrospective WA du forum eMarketing 2008

January 30, 2008

De retour de Paris après une journée à rallonge et un retour plus que mouvementé (le progrès ne vaut que s’il est partagé par tous), je voulais vous faire part de mes impressions sur le 2ème Forum e-Marketing. Avant d’attirer des commentaires, je tenais à préciser que ce billet ne porte que sur la journée du mardi 29 janvier et ne prend pas en compte les interventions du mercredi 30.

Merci en tout cas à toute l’équipe de ebusiness.info pour cette organisation impeccable! Quoi qu’on en dise, cette édition du forum était nettement plus qualifiée que celle de février dernier.
(more…)

Tags:, , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Blogging, In French, Omniture, Visual Sciences, Web 2.0, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Industry News, xiti | 1 Comment »

Rejuvenating WebTrends

November 4, 2007

Rejuvenating WebTrendsWhen René barged into our bedroom some 72 hours ago with my laptop in his hand, announcing Greg Drew’s departure from WebTrends, we finally understood why his name had been popping-up on searches to our blog for the last 24 hours in such an abnormal way.
I had thought Greg already looked tired when we briefly met in Washington and attributed that logically to the Road shows that WebTrends was holding, following its August release of the long awaited Marketing Lab² (ML²).

On the other hand, this news also reminded me of some discussions we had back in the spring in San Francisco with some WebTrends folks about the need for a refreshing touch within WebTrends in order to get past the very bad feeling we all shared about the first release of Marketing Lab. All partners we talked to were anxiously waiting – for far too long, I really want to stress that – for a more advanced release that would bring true added value to our existing clients. With ML1, this was clearly not the case.

ClickShift aka Dynamic Search

(more…)

Posted in eMetrics, Omniture, Thoughts and Ideas, Visual Sciences, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Industry News, WebTrends | 2 Comments »

Bruce T. Coleman new WebTrends CEO – Some thoughts

November 3, 2007

We have seen very interesting things since last eMetrics in Washington in the Web Analytics Industry, as Eric Peterson, recently appointed Director of OX2 declared to ClickZ: “This has been one of the weirder weeks in Web Analytics ever. One of the biggest publicly traded companies gets acquired, and another lets its executives go. Now I’m afraid to wake up tomorrow and find out what else might be going on“.  

So, let’s get back to WebTrends news as some more information has been published online regarding it’s top management changes. 

The first thing that seems clear now is that Greg Drew and the other three VPs were asked to leave by the Board of WebTrends. 

bruce_t_coleman.jpgBruce T. Coleman, who has become the interim CEO, knows WebTrends very well as he was member of the Board since 1998.  So even if he has no experience in Web Analytics operations, my feeling is that he understands very well the sector and he has got some ideas for the future.

Coleman has also extensive experience in running technology companies and thus we can expect some changes in the coming months.  From public declarations of their CMO Tim Kopp:

 “The company has been doing great. We’re driving double-digit growth. But we believe we can continue to do better and the board wanted to make a change to help accelerate growth“. 

So the objective is to increase growth and this seems to be the main reason of the management changes.  This was corroborated by Bruce Coleman who stated:

“We need to get more new deals, this is a company that’s growing, but not growing as much as the marketplace. Given the investments, [the owners] want to see more of a return.” (more…)

Tags:, , , , , , , , ,
Posted in eMetrics, Omniture, Thoughts and Ideas, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Industry News, WebTrends | Comments Off on Bruce T. Coleman new WebTrends CEO – Some thoughts

Greg Drew, CEO & top executives leave WebTrends

November 2, 2007

These are truly fascinating times for Web Analytics.

An article in the Portland Business Journal dated Oct.31st reveals thats WebTrends was hoping to be acquired by Omniture, who decided in favor of Visual Sciences.

Greg Drew, WebTrends’s CEO has now been replaced by Bruce T. Coleman.

Excerpts:

CEO Greg Drew and three other executives at WebTrends Inc. have left the company. Details of their departure remain unclear.

Pictures and biographies of each executive disappeared from the company’s Web site late Wednesday. Calls and a visit to the company, as well as a call to Drew, received no responses.

Drew had headed Portland-based Web analytics firm WebTrends for the past four years, and was part of the management team that took the company out as a separate enterprise from San Jose-based NetIQ Corp. in March 2005.

The WebTrends Web site now lists Bruce T. Coleman as CEO. He is CEO of El Salto Advisors, a consulting firm that provides interim management to computer software and service companies. He was most recently interim CEO of San Diego’s Websense until May 1999 and remains a director of that company.

[…] They speculate that with its market share slipping, WebTrends management wanted to sell the company to its biggest rival, Omniture Inc.

This particular piece of news begs the following questions:

  • why would two companies that just recently launched major upgrades to their product lines want to be acquired?
  • why sell to Omniture when WebTrends and Omniture have different views on Web Analytics?
  • were Visual Sciences and WebTrends in the same race and aware of it?
  • was Visual Sciences really favored over WebTrends? If so, what were the decisive factors in Omniture’s decision?

I am sure many people in the Web Analytics industry are as sad to see Greg Drew go as we are and wish him the best.

Thanks to Lars for pointing to the article!

As usual, constructive comments are welcome! 🙂

Posted in Omniture, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Industry News, WebTrends | 4 Comments »

How will the Web Analytics Industry evolve with Omniture as the green giant?

October 31, 2007

After the acquisition of Visual Sciences, we all wonder how Web Analytics vendors will react. So let’s get back to the different vendors out there and try to take a look at the future.

If we take the latest Forrester Research regarding Web Analytics that Megan Burns wrote a few months ago, which you can download here at Unica’s website, we find the main Web Analytics vendors well represented. Here’s a graph that sums up Megan’s findings:

forrester_wa_wave_q3_2007.jpg

Based on this, on the leaders corner we will have after this merger: Omniture, WebTrends, Unica and Coremetrics. But other players need to be followed as ClickTracks, IndexTools, of course the free tools as Google Analytics and the coming Gatineau and let’s not forget the local players such as Nedstat (The Netherlands) or Xiti (France).

So Omniture is becoming the Web Analytics green giant, will the others be able to compete and how? (more…)

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Gatineau, Google Analytics, IndexTools, Omniture, Thoughts and Ideas, Unica, Visual Sciences, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Industry News, WebTrends | 2 Comments »

Omniture Pacman? What future for Visual Sciences?

October 27, 2007

real-pacman.jpgYesterday I had a journalist calling me to ask my opinion regarding Visual Sciences’ takeover by Omniture. Since becoming a public company, Omniture has been acquiring different companies, but one can wonder: where’s Omniture going

Omniture strategy: Pacman?

We see different types of acquisitions done by Omniture in the past:

  1. Complementary products to enhance the portfolio of solutions proposed to their clients. This is the case for TouchClarity and Offermatica. One could argue that buying TouchClarity also allowed Omniture to have a better UK presence, but my feeling is that the technology was the first motivation for this acquisition. Other Web analytics players have also done acquisitions of this type as WebTrends with Position Gold and Dynamic Search or WebSideStory with Publish.
  2. A different type of acquisition made by Omniture is the one represented by that of Instadia. Instadia was a great Danish WA product that got acquired last year and if it wasn’t clear enough at the beginning, it is clear crystal now what the intentions where. Even if the product was interesting, Instadia’s product has been abandoned and clients are being migrated towards Omniture’s SiteCatalyst. The objectives behind this acquisition were to gain presence in the European market through customers and skillful employees that could integrate the rapidly growing European Omniture’s team (Omniture is now one of the vendors with most resources in the European market).

Based on this, where the does Visual Sciences acquisition fall? Well, a bit in between both scenarios. Buying Visual Sciences provides Omniture with clients, great minds and probably the best analytical and data visualization tool out there. See below for more details about Visual Sciences in the Omniture ecosystem. (more…)

Posted in Omniture, Visual Sciences, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Industry News | 7 Comments »

OmniSciences?

October 26, 2007

OmnitureOmniture, le géant mondial des WA vient d’annoncer le rachat de son concurrent direct, Visual Sciences (anciennement connu sous le nom de WebSideStory) pour la coquette somme de 394 millions de dollars, soit un peu moins du quart de la valorisation d’Omniture.

Il y avait bien entendu des rumeurs sur le sujet, comme le soulignait Ian Thomas cet été.

Au-delà du montant de la transaction qui ne sera finalisée que l’année prochaine, ce rachat de VS permet à Omniture de consolider sa position de leader mais remet surtout en question l’équilibre de la concurrence entre les différents éditeurs.

Pour les partenaires d’Omniture ou de VS, la situation risque de devenir intéressante car ce rachat permettrait de proposer une gamme de solutions vraiment modulable même si je pressens que HBX va disparaître (à terme) au profit de SiteCatalyst. Il y aura donc tout un effort d’accompagnement des clients à ce moment-là.

Plus d’informations sur l’intégration des offres et services à partir de l’année prochaine 🙂

Liens:

Comme d’habitude, vos commentaires constructifs sont les bienvenus 🙂

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in In French, Omniture, Visual Sciences, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Industry News | 2 Comments »

Omniture in the process of buying Visual Sciences

October 26, 2007

OmnitureTitle says it all 🙂

An announcement by Jim MacIntyre goes:

Visual Sciences has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Omniture, Inc.
The press release announcing this acquisition is available for review on our website. Until regulatory review of the acquisition is complete and the transaction closes, both companies will continue to operate independently and will continue to compete in the marketplace. This means that we will continue to deliver the products, service and support that your businesses can rely on.We understand that you will have questions about the future of the products lines. Future direction for products will be determined following the closing of the transaction and after comprehensive planning and feedback from customers and partners.

There we have it folks; I personally like to think of it as the integration of the best of both worlds.

Let’s see how this develops 🙂

Links:

Tags:, ,
Posted in Omniture, Visual Sciences, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Industry News | Comments Off on Omniture in the process of buying Visual Sciences

OX2 & Omniture

September 22, 2007

Omniture[Click for French version]

omniture_certified_logo.gifWith the recent arrival of Dave Rhee at OX2, our web analytics team now includes three full-fledged Omniture Certified Professionals, including Aurélie and yours truly. This is due in great part to the partnership that was just signed between Omniture and OX2 and announced by Neil Morgan during the Web Analytics Day on September 14th. Neil graciously acknowledged OX2’s expertise with Omniture since both Dave and myself had the unique opportunity to deploy Omniture’s web analytics tools for Fortune 500 companies and now this expertise is officially available to OX2 clients.

OX2 is now Omniture’s preferred partner for Belgium but our partnership extends of course to France, Germany, and beyond!

Adding Omniture to our skill portfolio was a logical step in our quest to best serve the interests of our clients and help them grow their online strategy by taking decisions based on hard, concrete data.

Thanks to the Omniture team for placing their trust in us and we are looking forward to a fruitful collaboration! 🙂

 

OX2 presence

The Web Analytics Day was also a good occasion for OX2 to present Dave and myself as Analytics Country Managers for Germany and France respectively, with Aurélie leading our (increasingly) European activities from our Brussels offices. This reinforced OX2’s image as a leading pan-European consultancy in the field of Web Analytics as well as bringing more credit to our position as a vendor-independent agency.

As you can see from the map here, there is plenty of room for us to grow but we’re working on it 😉

Take note in your calendar that OX2 and Omniture will both be presenting at the Customer First event in Brussels between October 18th and 19th.

Thanks for reading and, as usual, constructive comments are welcome 🙂

***

Version française (more…)

Posted in About us, Omniture, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Day, Web Analytics Industry News | 1 Comment »

OX2 Web Analytics Day 2007: Thank you & Feedback

September 18, 2007

Here’s a little video presenting the Web Analytics Day that took place last week here in Brussels done by Roberto, one of our Design team members.

I wanted again to thank all the persons that made this unique event possible and specially to:

– Eric for having accepted to deliver 3 outstanding presentations that really made the day worth it.

– Ian Thomas for giving us the exclusive moment of presenting Microsoft Gatineau

– All the sponsors (Omniture, WebTrends, IndexTools, Microsoft, Nedstat & Extenseo) for supporting this event and allowing us to invite the practitioners.

– All OX2 team that has been working hard on top of their day2day jobs to get this event ready.

– And last but not least, all the participants that showed up. This event was for you and the best gauge that I can think of to measure the successof the event are the feedback forms. Besides one person that complained because it was too much oriented for big compagnies, here are some interesting statistics from the 50 forms that we received back:

100% of respondents found the conference instructive

100% said that the agenda and topics matched their expectations

100% would recommend the event to their friends

Regarding the speakers, the ranking of satisfaction was pretty much as expected: Eric leads with almost everybody stating that he was very good followed by Aurélie, Dave and Stephan. On the vendors side, the ranking of satisfaction placed Omniture followed by WebTrends and then Indextools, Nedstat and Extenseo.

I have to admit that we were really amazed by the feedback forms and the positive emails that we have received since last friday. Here are some of the comments we have received:

“René, Aurélie, just a short note to say congratulations and thank you for today, I thought the audience, content and venue were all first class!”

“Thanks for hosting the event last week. I thought it was very informative and I certainly picked up a few useful insights.”

“I just wanted to congratulate you guys again in setting up this great event. All the people I have spoke to during the day where all enthusiastic about the event and Web Analytics.”

“Thank you for your event, I was really impressed”

“As I just told Rene over the phone. I think it was an amazing event on the level of Emetrics (and I do about 25 shows a year).“

this last comment really made my day, as eMetrics is for me the nirvana of the Web Analytics event.

Thanks again to everybody that came and allowed this event to be a great success.

And yes, see you next year at our third OX2 Web Analytics Day Brussels (It’s going to be difficult to do better I think…).

René

P.S. BTW, you can also view some pictures of the event at Flickr.

Posted in About us, Events, Gatineau, Omniture, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Day, Web analytics Demystified, Web Analytics Industry News, WebTrends | 4 Comments »

Web Analytics Day Brussels: a European shock therapy in Web Analytics

September 16, 2007

My conference journey started out on Thursday, when I hooked up with a couple of Belgian clients at the eDay in Rotterdam, before heading back to Brussels together with Eric, after his brief radio interview, where I was lucky enough to play around with his iPhone. To be quite honest, I’m not really an early adopter but if you touch it, believe me, you want one and leaving your credit card at home doesn’t really seem to work 😉
The car ride back home went fast – as we both like to drive fast – and discussed on the way recent evolutions of the Web Analytics industry, including Megan Burns’ latest Forrester wave that had been officially released a couple of days before.
To be quite honest, the night was short and the next day promised to be quite long as I picked up both Dave and Eric to head to the Federation of Enterprises in Brussels in order to have breakfast around 8 am.

WAD at the FEB

When setting up the Web Analytics Day in Brussels, our intention was mainly to get practitioners from major Belgian companies – and picked up a couple of international attendees in the process – in order to allow them to get a full review of what Web Analytics is actually about, looking beyond the pure acquisition of a web analytics tool. As Eric’s Web Analytics is Easy presentation also emphasized, using his RAMP analogy, the first letter stands for Ressources which include both technology as well as people. The other acronyms respectively stand for Analysis, Multivariate testing & Processes. (more…)

Posted in About us, Events, Gatineau, Influence analytics, Omniture, Social Networks, Thoughts and Ideas, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Day, Web analytics Demystified, Web Analytics Industry News, WebTrends | 6 Comments »

(Some) of my favorite vendors and speakers are coming, are you?

August 28, 2007

Web Analytics in EuropeThis is exciting, my little Web Analytics Business Unit could’t be happier with the upcoming Web Analytics Day to be held on September the 14th in Brussels!

We had some experience setting-up a Web Analytics Day back in 2005 and managed, in those early days to get almost 100 people to listen to what we had to say during workshops and conferences. This time around, man oh man, it’s going to be a ball!

Some of my favorite speakers are coming: Eric Peterson to talk about process!, KPIs & Web 2.0. Wandering Dave Rhee to discuss his favorite subject: Social Networks! and last but not least, the World Federation of Advertisers with its very own Stephan Loerke to discuss how Advertisers are becoming Accountable.

And it’s not all because we’re also going to let the vendors show off in order to fill you in on what they’ve been up to and how they see Web Analytics evolving. Omniture‘s going to surely show off Genesis while WebTrends will be presenting Marketing Lab 2 (ML² for those familiar with the topic), IndexTools‘ wonderful Dennis Mortensen will certainly crack a joke while assuring you his solution is the most cost effective one and flegmatic Ian Thomas from Microsoft will also be emphasizing his view upon Web Analytics… and free tools.  In addition we have also Nedstat, the biggest Dutch Web Analytics vendor who will be represented by Krist Verhelle and finally Extenseo, the leading SEO company in Belgium that will speak about Web Analytics & SEO.

But don’t forget, it’s also about the networking, about asking the questions you’ve always wondered about but were afraid to ask or blog about!
René’s in charge of food & cocktails so you can be sure all this exciting knowledge will be graciously floating on top of your cocktails. Hopefully, he’ll even think about the chocolates!
This is really a day about knowledge, about getting the most out of the online channel and the challenge we’ve all been embracing for many years now, building up an accountable society.

Join us, challenge us! Without you, we couldn’t made this wonderful European Dream Team happend!

Looking forward to meeting you on Friday the 14th of September at the Federation of Entreprises of Belgium. More information: www.webanalyticsday.eu.

Aurélie

Posted in About us, Events, Omniture, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Day, Web analytics Demystified, WebTrends | 4 Comments »

Do you wonder where Web Analytics is/was Hot?

July 15, 2007

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking at some BBC program about Paris and I was surfing through our blog in paralel when I stopped at the Google Trends post I wrote last year. Then I went back to the tool and I was intrigued to see the evolution of the trends of certain terms.

Follow this link: Google Tends search about Web Analytics (red), WebTrends (blue) & Omniture (orange)

googletrendsallyears.png

(more…)

Posted in Omniture, Thoughts and Ideas, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Industry News, WebTrends | 1 Comment »

Omniture Training week in London

May 29, 2007

OmnitureSo part of our team left for London on Monday evening to go to London and attend the Omniture Advanced Implementation Certification training, among other things.

Trip to London: riding the Eurostar

After a quick trip through the Channel in the Eurostar – along with Sir Stephen Hawking returning from Brussels – we checked into our hotel.

On a side note, the whole Eurostar experience is very much similar to taking a plane, what with the check-in process and all. (more…)

Posted in About us, Omniture, Web Analytics | 4 Comments »