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The Omniture Acquisition of Visual Sciences

Top 10 Benefits of Migrating to Omniture’s SiteCatalyst? Part II

Without further ado here are my thoughts on "benefits" 6-10. In case you just tuned in click here to start with my first post on the "Top 10 Benefits of Migrating to Omniture's SiteCatalyst?"

6. Standard reporting-
In this section the narrator claims that SiteCatalyst can be responsible for producing "board room ready reporting" that is "clear and compelling." Sigh. If only it were that easy. I admit Omniture does produce some of the prettiest interface and exportable reports. And no matter what decision makers at your company might say, prettiness does count for something. But you aren't going to get out of the box reports that you can put in front of a board room and tell a complete story. Often when I'm pulling together an overview report or analysis, I will find that I can start off by using prefab or easy to access reports in Omniture, but by the middle or end I am needing to build my own customized reporting in Excel. At that point I sometimes end up rebuilding the reporting I pulled from Omniture in Excel for the sake of continuity.

For the record Omniture reports do come out looking flashier than what you can build in Excel 2003, but if you invest in Excel 2007 you can easily build reports that trump both.

7. Personalized Interface-
Personalized interface reporting can be an important feature to your company (although it is only mentioned as an afterthought in this section). Interface reporting is a perfect way to get a quick overview of what is important to you and your business. It can be a dangerous tool if it is all people at your company utilize or if it makes you reliant on arbitrary little dials that point to green, yellow or red (which obviously translate to bling bling spend money like it ain't nothing, the Magic 8 ball says "Ask again later" or Chapter 11).

Those currently using HBX are probably no stranger to interface reporting…or are you? I'm not exactly sure why, but in an informal study of Semphonic clients’ accounts I find that those using SiteCatalyst are far more likely to be actively using interface reports than those with HBX. A safe bet why is that in Omniture interface reports are much more flexible. If you’re used to the complete freedom of Excel, they will make you feel like you’re trapped in a Columbian jail, but compared to other tools they are one of the biggest backyards in the neighborhood

If you, the heavy tool user at your company, are assigned to build reporting for others, you will notice several weaknesses in how reports are shared. You can build a dashboard or singular report and allow other users to access it, but if you want it to be easily accessible for other users or appear for them upon login you'll have to login to their account and set those things up yourself. No big deal if you’re setting up three accounts, but headache city if that number is double digits.

To sum five and six up, Omniture will give you more interface reporting, exporting and scheduling options than HXB. It's your call whether that's important to you or not (be aware that the above thoughts are relevant to things you can get immediately out of HBX and SiteCatalyst; to see my thoughts on how both tools Excel integration tools stack up click here).

8. Web 2.0-
This section was perplexing to me. It is titled "Web 2.0" but really just discusses how Omniture can correlate data. Last time I checked, even if your site doesn't contain blogs, social networking or rich internet applications, correlating data was still an important feature.

The main takeaway current HBX clients should have from this section is that when using SiteCatalyst you’re going to have to think about your data and extracting relevant things from it differently. In HBX you might have built an Active Segment to understand the engagement level of people coming from a specific email campaign but with SiteCatalyst you’re going to have to rely on Subrelations/Correlations. Unfortunately, Subrelations/Correlations are much less flexible than Active Segments. Once you build an Active Segment you essentially can correlate it with anything else you collect data on, but with Subrelations/Correlations you have a finite number of things that you can correlate your data to. If you anticipate your needs when setting up your account, then you should have no problem; but if the Subrelations/Correlations you set up don’t cut it for reporting or an analysis, you’ll have to pick up the phone and your wallet.

9. Genesis-
Numbers nine and ten are essentially strategically placed selfless plugs. I'm sure when Omniture purchased VS they intended to convert the VS customer base to being not only SiteCatalyst clients but clients of the full spectrum of all things Omniture. And Genesis would be one of those things. Although I have limited experience with it, I do like the idea of being able to easily send out emails to specific segments of your site users. I have heard some complaints the Genesis based paid campaign optimization technology isn't quite "there" yet, but I lack hands on experience to support that claim.

10. Platform-
Ten is the kicker. The point that will undoubtedly linger with you. The words that will leave you drooling over not only SiteCatalyst, but everything Omniture has to offer. But Discover, SearchCenter, Offermatica and Touch Clarity and Genesis aren't the same as the pack of gum you add in the checkout isle. They’re damn expensive. If you’re debating between SiteCatalyst and Google Analytics, you almost certainly bother with these add ons, but for big budgets these will all be tempting in their own ways. If you’re considering add ons just be careful not to out buy your bandwidth (ALERT: That last sentence was a Gross oversimplification).

I understand why Omniture lumped these things together, but you should mentally break them out. Discover sticks out of that list as the only thing that doesn’t do something completely different than SiteCatalyst. If you currently have active HBX users responsible for analysis and reporting in place, they should be able to understand and utilize Discover from (almost) day one. In fact they might need to utilize the tool to extract data that you previously were able to get directly out of HBX. The other tools are the outliers: the ones that integrate (although not necessarily easily) with SiteCatayst, but do entirely separate things than SiteCatalyst. These should all be evaluated individually with consideration to their benefit to your company and if you have resources that could not only handle but extract value from them.

Posted by Jesse Gross 1/27/08

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Top 10 Benefits of Migrating to Omniture’s SiteCatalyst?

Despite the finalization of the Omniture acquisition of Visual Sciences, details of the future of the product line and migration process are as uncertain as ever. On Omniture.com the ridiculous “Learn about the migration program” link routes to a page of quotes from those currently benefiting from Omniture. Not only does this link route to a page of irrelevant information its salt in a wound. When I’m approaching a traffic jam the last thing I want is a call from my coworker, who left early, letting me know he was pulling into his driveway.

One of the most substantial pieces of “new” information is the narrated presentation of the top 10 reasons why HBX customers should switch to SiteCatalyst. To help HBX customers wade through this list of spoon fed Omniture rhetoric I figured I would provide a heavy tool users perspective on each reason why to switch. Here are my thoughts on 1-5. Expect 5-10 to be posted in a day or two.

Omniture’s Top 10

1. Admin Console
Omniture describes their admin console as a powerful tool for maintaining and sustaining all things SiteCatalyst and largely I agree with this description. The admin consol is fairly easy to use and gives you a lot of control over creating logins, specifying what content users can access and manipulating report suites. Its not quite as intuitive as the drag, drop, bada bing, bada boom interface the friendly narrator suggests, but the heavy tool users (who should be the only ones with access) should have no trouble using it. And once heavy users get a taste of it, it will be hard to remember how they ever lived without it.

If anything, my biggest issue with the admin console it that it allows users to change too much. In two clicks you can remove every page in a report suite or do numerous other actions that will do irreparably damage to your report suite or wallet (usually Omniture can fix your f*** ups, but it’s gonna cost ya). Additionally, it’s surprisingly easy to create undeletable entities, such as report suites and data categories here. It is common for higher up, light users to expect access to something called the “Admin Console,” but in interest of keeping your report suite looking clean and full of numbers this should be discouraged.

Conversely, there are areas of the admin console where you will reach a dead end and have to call Omniture Live Support. Sometimes it will make sense why you have to call, but other times, like when your building a rollup report suite, you’ll be a bit annoyed.

2. International Capabilities-
It’s nice that Omniture supports a lot of currencies. You still have to pick a single currency per report suite, so it’s not revolutionary system for handling currency but its still better than nothing. In reality no web analytics tools handle multiple currencies as well as they should, and this is a common area to run into implementation and reporting issues.

I can’t say much in regards to the fact that Omniture supports a slew of languages, but I was surprised that Omniture didn’t mention here (or anywhere in this list) the extensive amount of online help and documentation they have available. Heavy users will often find holes in the manual and Knowledge Base, but it’s still the best online help of any enterprise web analytics solutions. The value of good online support should be taken into consideration when you are evaluating your tool options. Omniture Live Support licenses must be purchased on a person to person basis and are NOT cheap. If you plan on having SiteCatalyst users in your organization that do not have Live Support access they will most certainly be digging through what is help is available online.

3. Version Support-
Omniture promises to support older versions of SiteCatalyst and I promise not to care. The biggest difference I notice from one generation to the next is the color scheme. Users would have to be VERY stuck in their ways or not be able to adapt to the minor changes of a new version of SiteCatalyst. Omiture’s willingness to support old versions makes then enablers, and it might actually benefit your business if they let older versions sail into the sunset when their time comes.

4. Custom Metrics-
I tend not to use custom metrics very often, but I do think they are cool. If your into stretching the limits of in interface reporting to the max custom metrics will help. You do have to be careful not to get too carried away building metrics, though, or your reports could become more confusing than it is helpful.

5. Segmentation-
Telling a group of people that are currently using HBX Active Segments that ASIs are a reason to switch to SiteCatalyst is just ludicrous. Powerful segmentation is an essential feature of any enterprise solution, so I understand why Omniture feels the need to brag about their capabilities, but they are barking up the wrong tree. ASIs are a massive step back from Active Segments. ASIs are sluggish and limited to 5 (which at times feels like it might as well be 0). In principal these things segmentation tools are nearly identical, but if you’re expecting ASIs equal to or better than Active Segmentation you’re going to be sorely mistaken.

The narrator also mentions SAINT as a segmentation tool. Although I don’t really agree that most of the uses for SAINT are related to segmentation, I do like SAINT. It’s a handy and fairly easy to use classification tool that allows you to easily change things like product numbers into product names or rollup products into relevant groupings. When rolling up you only get summations and not deduping, so look to the tool for page view data and not visit/visitor data. SAINT will give you a slightly easier development, since you won’t need to spend hours figuring out how to send Omniture an image request with the product name instead of the product number. Also SAINT will keep your report suites looking cleaner and easier to use.

Posted by Jesse Gross 1/24/08

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Ask Redux: More on the Omniture Acquisition of Visual Sciences

I’m also going to take a quick stab at MY answers to some of the questions we didn’t address in our Webinar and some of the questions we got online:

Will the Omniture Acquisition Drive up Costs? At least in the short run, I don’t think so. Transitioning systems is a classic drop-off point. If you are going to have the trouble of switching software you might as well switch to the system you like the best. So Omniture has a real incentive to make it attractive for companies to stay in the fold. I know both WebTrends and Coremetrics have put together very aggressive marketing plans and sales pitches designed to make it very cost-effective for HBX users to switch. So at least in the short run it may actually improve costs. Longer term, any time a significant competitor gets removed from the market it has the potential to increase costs. But between Unica, WebTrends, Coremetrics and GA there should be sufficient competition to keep the marketplace vibrant.

As an Omniture user, how will this affect me? This is a question that both Paul and Phil had pretty strong feelings about but which we didn’t get a chance to tackle. The effects seem likely to be two-fold. First, the acquisition of a large new customer base and the problems are transition are certainly a significant customer-support risk. No US web analytics company has a strong reputation when it comes to customer support. Everyone has grown too fast – and customer support is an industry-wide challenge (for people like Semphonic as well). I think that’s a worrisome factor. On the plus side, the desire to ease the transition path may make for some significant improvements in the SiteCatalyst world and in the broader analytic suite. If some of the best features of HBX make it over into SC (improvements to the Excel Integration, a reporting API, tagless Campaigns from Admin, etc.) it would definitely help make for an even better product.

How will Omniture invest in future R&D of HBX, Search and Visual Site? This is an issue I’ve written about before but there is a real diversity of opinion within Semphonic about the likely direction around Visual Site/Workstation and Discover. I don’t know about Search – that’s pretty much an independent product that I’d expect to be incorporated into the total suite. HBX will probably go away. But Visual – that’s a tricky question. On the one hand, Visual and Discover fulfill nearly identical functions (analyst workbench). On the other, they are dramatically different in look-and-feel and fairly different in capability. I don’t think there’s any doubt that the VS product offers a higher-level of capability. But I also believe that it does so at a significant complexity cost within the interface. That complexity cost is a real barrier in many companies. In addition, Platform 5 provides a license-based solution that can compete with companies like Unica that offer a much more natural platform for data integration than any SaS solution is ever likely to provide. How will Omniture sort it all out? Damned if I know. What’s my own preferred direction? I’d build a Discover interface on top of Platform 5 but include some of the most important VS capabilities in the new product (superior segment building, event and time handling). Hey, while I’m in dreamland, I wish they’d throw in a WebTrends' Score like product to boot!

Is the industry better or worse off in the wake of the acquisition? I think anytime you lose a significant player the industry as a whole is probably worse off. That doesn’t mean that many HBX users won’t be better off. My own view is that the VS Management Team had either through lack-of-interest or lack-of-ability allowed that part of their product line to stagnate. So I think many HBX users will be better served in this new configuration. I’m not so sure about the impact for Visual Site customers. To see how that plays out, you’d need to know how the answers to the question above will eventually shake out – and right now I doubt ANYONE – even people at Omniture and VS, really know the answers.

How does Google’s entry into the analytics arena affect Omniture's ability to sell into the SMB space or more specifically our ability to resell HBX into the SMB space? It’s going to hurt. In the SMB space, GA is very formidable entry indeed. Frankly, that’s competition I’d rather not have if I were reselling HBX page views (Semphonic doesn’t resell page views by the way – we try to be vendor neutral) into the SMB arena.

How much of the historical investment for existing HBX customers can be utilized in the migration to SiteCatalyst or will past technology investments effectively be written off in this migration? Tough question. Like any significant software migration, I’d expect to write-off a piece of my historical investment but by no means the whole. Here’s the good news. Technically, the implementation of these systems is quite similar. The core products are – if not sisters – at least cousins. The knowledge gained in administering and using one is HIGHLY portable to the other. On the whole, I think most companies will find that quite a large part of their historical investment will transfer relatively well to the Omniture world.

It seems that the industry is working towards a managed services model. What options will remain for those companies that prefer keep their data in-house for various reasons including security or cost? This is a huge issue. The industry HAS been moving to a Managed Service Model for at least the last four years. But in many ways, I think the trend is starting to swing back the other way. That’s a big part of the reason why I think the technology direction around Visual Site and Platform 5 is so uncertain. There is a real need for solutions outside the Managed Service Model and that’s a need that Omniture has not previously addressed. For many of our larger clients, data integration with INTERNAL data is probably the single most significant problem they face. And it’s an issue that SaS is always going to have challenges with – especially given the size and nature of the data we are talking about. That’s one of the reasons I’d very much like to see Omniture continue the Platform 5 direction. I’d also like to see Unica continue to grow in this direction – and maybe focus on high-end clients with data integration needs. Plus, I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to see enterprise clients who are struggling with this issue move increasingly into BI/Statistical Analysis tools for web analytics. There are real difficulties with that approach – but real benefits as well.

Will the lack of a true database in both the Omniture and VS products hurt their adoption by enterprise customers who demand an SOA architecture? Yes, I think so. Though it is perfectly possible to have a SOA architecture without a true database. That being said, I’ve always felt that the single biggest attraction to a product like Unica’s is that it is built on an open database platform. There are many, many advantages to this approach. Of course, that being said, the fundamental question remains – can you achieve the performance you need without a specialized architecture. That’s not a question answered theoretically but only in the real-world.

Can you cover some strong reasons to STAY on HBX, versus switching to another solution like WebTrends or Core? I’m not sure I have reasons for staying with HBX except insofar as that’s where you are until you migrate to SiteCatalyst. So I think the real question is whether you should plan on migrating to SiteCatalyst/Omniture or to another company like WebTrends, Unica or Coremetrics. There certainly are many good reasons for taking the Omniture migration path: clear industry leader, robust suite of tools, very compatible implementation and GUI to existing HBX experience, new capabilities like Discover, etc. Does that mean it’s a slam dunk? No - though I think it will be the most common path. You need to use your experiences with HBX to think about appropriate direction going forward. Each of these products (plus GA) has a unique set of strengths and weaknesses.

Posted by Gary Angel 12/15/07

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Discover 2.5 and Visual Sciences

What Omniture will do with Visual Sciences has been a hot topic – and one we’ll be focusing on during our first Ask Semphonic this coming Tuesday (see http://www.semphonic.com/analytics/asksem.asp). It’s impossible to predict the future, but I’ve been using Discover 2.5 recently, and there are things about it which might be a foreshadowing of things to come.

Firstly, at its heart, it’s still Omniture Discover. If its parents are SiteCatalyst and Discover, the genes are almost entirely the latter. If they try to integrate it with Visual Site, which they’re going to have to do, in my opinion, those same strong genes will trump anything coming from VS.

At the same time, there is a strong SiteCatalyst look and feel to Discover 2.5 – the left navigation and color schemes, for example. Discover 2.5 does not, in its present form, replace SiteCatalyst 13.5, but one has to ask whether Discover’s new look hints that this may be Omniture’s intention down the road.

In which case, what would fill the vacuum created by the phasing out of SiteCatalyst? HBX. Or rather, a product whose parents are HBX and SiteCatalyst. The half-way point between the richness of SiteCatalyst and straightforwardness of HBX would be a product that could be too simplistic for a current, heavy user of SiteCatalyst, thus pushing them to Discover 3.X and producing more revenue for Omniture.

In any event, that’s one scenario worth speculating about. Ask me again on Tuesday.October 26, 2007

Posted by Paul Legutko 12/06/07

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Don’t Settle for Leftover Turkey When it comes to Web Measurement: More Thoughts on the Acquisition of Visual Sciences by Omniture

Almost lost in the shuffle before Thanksgiving was the exit of Tim Kopp from WebTrends. Tim follows the rest of the Management Team out the door – further testimony to the speed of change in our market. It’s a development that casts a huge cloud over their future. When you are evaluating enterprise software, the replacement of a company’s entire management team is a nearly insurmountable black mark. It’s all too easy to look at the VS experience – where there was a plausible alternative management team in-place – and see how precipitously the market can shift in the wake of such changes. Enterprise software decisions are about a lot more than technology – and it would take something more than guts to choose WebTrends as your enterprise solution until you see firm evidence that there is a Management Team, that you know what it stands for, and that you believe in the company and the direction. Having a good piece of software is just one of many requirements to be a good enterprise alternative.

I don’t know how big an impact that has on decision-making around transitioning out of HBX. Most of our customers are clearly leaning toward the Omniture path anyway. Their concerns are primarily about the economics of transition and the technology effort involved – not too many seem inclined to go down the vendor evaluation path.

I think Omniture will make the economics of transition very reasonable. And I believe they will do all they can to make the technology effort as small as possible. But I think HBX customers need to temper their expectations around the technology effort – and should expect and plan for a considerable implementation effort regardless of what technology Omniture provides.

Why? Based on our experience with many Omniture and HBX implementations, there are fundamental differences between good implementations in each that no automation can solve.

In the last two (good) weeks before Thanksgiving, we added three new Omniture clients (four really - but I don't have the data for the the fourth). One is a startup in beta. One is a mid-sized, established online retail business. One is a very large media company.

It is striking to look at the broad shape of these fairly typical implementations and compare them to what we usually see in the HBX world.

The startup has 26 prop vars (custom metrics in the HBX world), 30 evars (equivalent to the new eCommerce custom metrics in HBX) and 25 custom events (no real HBX equivalent except Search) defined. They have 1 ASI defined (equivalent to Active Segments in HBX).

The mid-size company has 50 prop vars and 50 evars defined. They have 16 custom events. They use no ASIs.

The big media company has 47 prop vars, 40 evars, and 27 custom events defined. They have 3 Active Segments defined.

We don’t have any new HBX implementations in the last two weeks - surprise. But I can pull similar sites from our client list. For HBX, a similar startup would probably have 1 Custom Metric, 7-8 Active Segments and possibly 1 Custom Event (Search). The mid-size company would have probably have had 2-3 Custom Metrics, 20 Active Segments and 1 Custom Event (Search). The big media site would usually have 4 Custom Metrics, 1 Custom Event (Search) and 40-100 Active Segments.

The Omniture implementations are fundamentally different in structure than typical HBX implementations. They have far more custom metrics, eCommerce variables and custom events. They use far fewer Active Segments.

Beyond the simple fact of being different, however, what’s important to understand is that you can’t manufacture decisions about Omniture custom variables and events from thin air. They are business driven. Nor do they map in any potentially automatable fashion to Active Segments. And while it’s true that any Custom Metric in HBX would almost certainly become a propVar and/or eVar in Omniture, that would still leave an impoverished Omniture implementation; an implementation that is far below the common standard when done from scratch.

The bulk of the work in any Omniture implementation is figuring out and coding your custom variables, eCommerce variables and Custom Events. This limits Omniture’s ability to transition a client from HBX to SiteCatalyst without essentially redoing the implementation.

Suppose, for example, Omniture rolled existing HBX data into SiteCatalyst and revamped their gateway so that HBX image requests were mapped into SiteCatalyst requests. A solution like this would instantly roll every site currently using HBX to SiteCatalyst and would require absolutely no work or retagging. Your only change would be to open SiteCatalyst instead of HBX.

Sounds great. And, in one respect, it is a great solution – one that looks seamless and appears to meet any conceivable objection. Except that it will leave you with an Omniture implementation that doesn’t take advantage of any of the best features of the product you are now using.

Bottom line – you should expect to put some real effort into re-designing and re-thinking your tag when you transition to SiteCatalyst. And you should plan for this regardless of whatever technology solution Omniture provides. Indeed, the technology Omniture provides for the transition will be almost entirely irrelevant to the effort – since the bulk of the effort is unrelated to mapping simple variables like page name from HBX to SiteCatalyst.

So I’m betting that contrary to conventional wisdom, waiting for Omniture transition tools is pointless, because the best you can reasonably hope for is a minor automation saving. The time-consuming parts of the transition are things that simply cannot be automated. That’s why I’d recommend that most companies seriously involved in web measurement think about transition sooner rather than later. The longer you delay, the further behind you’ll be when you finally make the switch.

Coming from a company that has ALWAYS been loathe to ask anyone to switch tools, this may seem paradoxical. But in this particular case, the future is clear and the question is when not if. The longer you stay anchored in the world of HBX, the longer you’re going to be eating leftover Turkey.

Posted by Gary Angel 11/25/07

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Transitioning from HBX to SiteCatalyst

In my last post, I summarized how a company currently using Visual Sciences might start to think about options going forward. The key factors to consider were type of current product (HBX or Visual Site), type of usage (reporting focused, or analytics focused), and degree of satisfaction.

No matter where you fall in those buckets, however, there are really only a few roads you can actually follow. You can stay with HBX as long as possible. Indeed, until things like transition pricing, Omniture strategy, and product roadmap are clarified, that’s likely to be the wisest step. And unless your VS contract is expiring in the very near term, you don’t have to push the panic button on making a decision.

However, if your contract is expiring or you are the type of organization that is continually tagging new sites, then you really shouldn’t postpone making a decision about both short and long-term direction. And ultimately, your choices boil down to this - you can move to SiteCatalyst or you can move to another tool.

I believe that a significant majority of HBX customers will choose to move to SiteCatalyst. I’m less certain about Visual Site customers – and, of course, they may not have to move at all.

Why do I think HBX customers will mostly pick Omniture?

There are a host of reasons. Not the least of which is that Omniture was already winning most open tool evaluation battles. In addition, SiteCatalyst and HBX are, as I’ve already remarked, very similar products. So for most companies, the simplest and least difficult transition would be to SiteCatalyst. Finally, I’m assuming that Omniture will both incentive this behavior and make it even easier than it already is.

So what’s involved in an HBX to SiteCatalyst transition? Quite a lot actually.

The first step is transitioning your contract. You need to know what options you’re going to be using in the Omniture world and how to structure your contract appropriately. Many aspects of the Omniture suite are similar to those in Visual Sciences but there are important differences to understand as well. From a contractual perspective, key issues are likely to be the following:

  • Should I buy Discover 2.x?
  • Should I purchase extra ASIs (somewhat equivalent to Active Segments)?
  • Do I need Data Warehouse?
  • Should I maintain by current Account Structure?

Of these, I believe that the most important by far is the decision around Discover – a decision that will have a deep impact on your planning at every future step.

Once you’ve go your contract worked out, the next step is to transition your tag. I don’t believe this step will ever be seamless. It is perfectly possible to change an HBX tag into a SiteCatalyst tag in an automated fashion. Alas, doing so does not guarantee anything like an optimal SiteCatalyst installation. As with most tagging, the key decisions here are less about the mechanics of javascript and more about what information needs to be captured and where and how it can be stored.

Some of the key tag elements to consider include:

  • Should I implement a link tracking strategy?
  • Do I need to modify my campaign tracking?
  • How am I going to handle internal / tagless campaigns?
  • Do I need to change Commerce and Cart tracking?
  • How can I take advantage of Omniture’s much richer set of Custom (Prop) Variables?
  • How can I take advantage of Omniture’s eCommerce Variables?
  • How can I take advantage of Omniture’s events?

All of these are important, but the last three will probably take up more time than all the others combined. Most Omniture implementations spend a lot of time on these last three questions and there is no way to answer them from an existing HBX implementation.

After you’ve transitioned your tag, you’ll need to address some key roll-out issues including transitioning your existing management report set. This is actually one of the biggest and most difficult transition points if, like many HBX shops, you relied heavily on ReportBuilder. Omniture has similar (but clunkier) capabilities to ReportBuilder, and is promising to make this offering more attractive. That would be a big win, because otherwise you can expect some serious pain in this step.

Even if Omniture does improve the ReporBuilder tool, however, there are significant issues in reporting that revolve around Active Segmentation and ASIs. ASI’s in Omniture are much less used than Active Segments in HBX though they provide essentially similar functionality. Unfortunately, you tend to have many fewer ASI’s than Active Segments. And ASI’s are much less reliable – often lagging significantly behind current data. I don’t expect Omniture to improve this capability because I don’t see them cannibalizing Discover 2.x sales.

Unless you move to Discover AND Omniture provides Excel to Discover integration ala ReportBuilder, you may be faced with a difficult automation path for reporting.

Before you despair, however, be sure to check out the capabilities of correlations and sub-relations in SiteCatalyst. These provide cross-tabulation capabilities for specific variables. They don’t replace Active Segments per se – but they can often be used to replace specific reporting cuts that could only be provided using Active Segments in HBX. So depending on how you use your Active Segments, you may be able to emulate many reporting metrics without ASI’s in SiteCatalyst.

Also, be sure to consider the possible role of dashboards in your reporting. Dashboards are used in both HBX and SiteCatalyst – but are somewhat more powerful and more common in SiteCatalyst.

After reporting, of course, you’ll have to transition your users. For most users, the switch-over from HBX to SiteCatalyst shouldn’t be too difficult. The two products are – and always have been – awfully similar. In most cases, basic training on the GUI should suffice.

If you use datafeeds, the sql-interface or any of the other specialized tools that surround HBX, you’ll obviously have custom work around those as well. The use of those tools is too specialized to generalize about the difficulty in transitioning. Usually, you’d expect a fair amount of work around transitioning these more advanced capabilities – but that won’t always be the case.

If your organization is serious about web analytics and is a current VS customer, then it’s already time to be thinking about the best going forward strategy. Don’t just assume that the decision can be put off till it’s contract renewal time. That may in fact be possible, but if you are regularly tagging new sites, then every site you tag in HBX will be that much more work when it comes time to transition over.

It’s not a bad idea to start considering your options immediately. Keep in mind that the two companies are (and will be for a while) at arm’s length. You can’t negotiate with them together and you can’t get a contract that will specifically take into account the transition. However, you can negotiate with Omniture immediately and you can work with them to develop a transition strategy that will make both technical and financial sense. And even if you’re not ready for that, you can at least begin to understand where your company needs to move and what resources and planning need to be marshaled to keep – and improve - your web measurement effort through the inevitable transition.

Posted by Gary Angel 11/4/07

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Omniture and Web 2.0

Now that Omniture is on the verge of swallowing Visual Sciences, the question is how well will Omniture move from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. Will the Visual Sciences acquisition help or will it distract? Another important question is what will Web 2.0 measurement look like? Will it be supported by a powerful new application or will it be supported by a platform that accepts components from a wide range of third-party developers? My guess - and it's just guess - is that Web 2.0 will eventually go the way of a te platform with components from others.

Why, because there are too many possibilities in Web 2.0. Web 2.0 measurement will have address a wide range of challenges including mobile device support, qualitative in addition to quantitative analysis, integration of multiple data sources, rich media, as well as address issues of visitor identification. Making Web 2.0 measurement even more complicated, most of these challenges will not have just one solution. One size solution fits all solutions won't cut it in Web 2.0 and beyond. I don't think anyone vendor will be able to be all things to all web sites. If they try, they won't succeed. Rather the vendor that develops a te platform that accepts a wide range of third-party add-ons will be enormously profitable.

In their Wall Street Journal article, Strategies for Being a Platform Leader, September 27, 2007, Annabelle Gawer and Michael A. Cusumano write about what it takes to be a platform leader. Two of the qualities of a te platform include solving "an essential technological problem for many players in an industry" and "be[ing] easy to connect to or build upon." In addition, a successful platform leader must "create economic incentives that encourage other firms to develop complementary applications for the platform, and at the same time protect its own ability to profit from its innovations. This balancing act is perhaps the greatest challenge to platform leadership."

The question is can Omniture do this. So far, these qualities have not been their strengths. However, now that they are acquiring a competitor will they have the vision and the ability to move from a killer application to a te platform? Will the Visual Sciences acquisition go to their heads and prevent them taking the steps needed for success in Web 2.0 What do you think?

Posted by Joel Hadary 10/30/07

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All Cretans are Liars…said the Journalist

Thoughts on the Omniture Acquisition of VS and What to do if you are a VS Customer

Eric Peterson pointed out (in an emailed subject-lined “wow”) that I was awfully harsh in my last post on the Visual Sciences Management team. Reading that post again, I have to agree. It reads like an exercise in journalism – which is fine as far as it goes. But as someone who has always been deeply suspicious of those who write about things instead of doing them, I’m not so thrilled with being a journalist (complete with the requisite 20-20 hindsight). I’ve failed in business before. It hurts. Mea Culpa – for piling on.

It is the customers of Visual Science who have the difficult decisions ahead of them. And with that in mind, I wanted to cover the range of options those customers face and talk a bit about what they should be thinking about and doing. As my colleague Phil Kemelor points out, there is likely to be a long period of grace during which VS customers can, if they choose, do absolutely nothing. That’s a good thing. But if your HBX contract is coming up for renewal in the short-term or you’re an enterprise deeply committed to web analytics, then doing nothing is probably not much of an option.

When I developed our Tool Evaluation White Paper, I started from the premise that there is no one “right” solution. Choosing the best tool is an exercise in matching organizational requirements, skills and culture with tool and vendor capabilities and vendor focus. The same holds pretty much true for companies planning a direction in light of this acquisition. What your company is and where it currently stands vis-à-vis HBX and Visual Site will play a huge part in shaping the direction you should go during the transition.

Case 1: Currently Evaluating Visual Sciences
If you were evaluating web analytics tools and VS was one of your possible directions, then it might seem like the impact is simple and straightforward. You cross off an option and move on. If you were evaluating HBX, that’s pretty much the case. I think the acquisition by Omniture further strengthens their market position – and that should probably play a small role in your thinking about Omniture vis-à-vis WebTrends or Unica. But Omniture was already the clear leader in the field. So I don’t think much would be changed in your overall product evaluation. In general, you go with the clear leader unless you have compelling price, organizational or technical reasons not to. Those reasons do exist for at least some companies – so it’s pretty much still a matter of deciding whether any such compelling reasons exist for you.

If you were considering Visual Site, however, the decision is less clear. First, Omniture has indicated they are going to keep and support at least a part of that technology. And that technology is quite different than the rest of the Omniture product suite – so if you were looking outside the Software-as-Service model, should you still consider Visual Site? It’s a tough question. I think the acquisition raises huge questions around this product line. There’s no telling how much of the core technical team will stick around. The GUI (as I’ve pointed out) is way different from the rest of the Omniture suite and I think is highly likely to be scrapped. But Platform 5 may stick around and might form the basis of a really excellent licensed solution from Omniture. That’s a lot of uncertainty to deal with, though. And if you are considering this direction, it could only be because web analytics is vital to you and you have to a sophisticated existing measurement culture and investment. Under those circumstances, it seems like you’re betting a lot on some big unknowns.

So my sense is that while you might continue evaluating this product suite, you should probably score it down significantly vis-à-vis any alternatives – including building your own data warehouse for high-end analytic needs.

Case 2: Light HBX User
If you are an existing HBX user, then a great deal of what informs your decision should be your current level of usage and satisfaction with HBX and web measurement. For customers who I would describe as “light” users (few if any Active Segments, little or no use of ReportBuilder, focus on traffic reporting), the likeliest migration path is probably Google Analytics.

If you fit this profile, HBX was probably not the best choice for you to begin with. And Site Catalyst is even worse. On the plus side, Omniture will be able to make the transition from HBX to SiteCatalyst largely painless for this type of customer. But if you aren’t doing serious reporting, segmentation and/or deep-analysis, you’ll probably be happier with Google Analytics. And you won’t be spending any money either. GA has the best user interface in the market. It has a very easy implementation path. It comes from one of the strongest brands in the world. And there is every indication that they are building the tool aggressively. While it has many weaknesses as either an enterprise reporting or analytics tool – and while Google is the ultimate “low-touch” vendor with virtually no enterprise level service or support – these things shouldn’t matter too much for light HBX users.

With the acquisition, you’re going to have transition users to a new GUI anyway – so this probably the best time to pull the plug and do what you’ve probably been thinking about anyway – installing Google Analytics.

Case 3: Medium HBX User – Satisfied
What if you are fairly serious user of HBX and have been pretty happy with the product? You use Active Segmentation – both to support your reporting and for at least occasional deep-dive analysis. You have a significant investment in ReportBuilder Excel reports. You have a fairly large base of trained users who are, by and large, happy with the data they get.

In this situation, you’re likely best bet is to transition to Site Catalyst. Site Catalyst is like a slightly older big-sister to HBX. It is much closer in look and feel and structure to HBX than products from WebTrends or Unica. It works in the same fashion and with many of the same benefits and downsides. It also provides some additional growth paths that might have eventually turned into real pain points with HBX. And, of course, you’ll have moved from a struggling company to a very successful one and you’re uncertainty around product and company will largely evaporate. For this class of company (which may be the most common case), I think the decision is relatively easy and the acquisition largely beneficial. There may be a bit of short term pain as you transition reporting assets and struggle with segmentation issues – but in the long run you’ll probably be in a significantly happier place.

Case 4: Serious HBX-User – Satisfied
Like any product, HBX has a very specific set of strengths and weaknesses. It was very good for large, multi-site organizations whose focus was on advanced reporting. It was weaker for sites focused on deep-dive analysis of a single large site. So if you were a serious HBX-user and you were still very satisfied with the product, chances are you fit the first of these descriptions not the second. If you were heavily focused on deep-dive analytics, then you probably wouldn’t have been satisfied with HBX.

So what about the large, multi-site organization focused on advanced reporting? With HBX going away, is SiteCatalyst the right direction? It may well be. SiteCatalyst will support most of what HBX did. It has similar if slightly less usable Excel integration. That’s a big plus for organizations that are focused on reporting and were heavy ReportBuilder consumers. The GUI, as mentioned is similar, and, on the whole more powerful. The dashboard capabilities are significantly better. The transition will provide many significant positives.

However, there are a few drawbacks to this direction.

First, there are some weird asymmetries in the two products. For deep-dive analysis, Omniture has much better segmentation capabilities (at least when you include Data Warehouse and Discover). But for reporting, ASIs are significantly worse in capability than Active Segments. Sometimes, specific data points that might need to be obtained using Active Segments in HBX can be obtained using correlations and sub-relations in Omniture. But not always. And Data Warehouse and Discover have significant limitations for supporting distributed reporting. These asymmetries will likely prove to be your major pain points in the transition.

Second, SiteCatalyst tags take more work than HBX tags. In fact, they probably take more work than any of the alternative solutions you’d consider. It’s not like they take a LOT more work – but they do take more. The implementation structure simply isn’t as clean or consistent as some of the more recent ones from vendors like Unica. If you have lots of sites to tag, that can become a fairly significant issue.

Finally, when it comes to the quality of reporting capability within the interface, some of the other vendors field products that are probably better than either HBX or SiteCatalyst. If you aren’t going to invest in Discover 2, you may find that there are more attractive solutions on the market elsewhere.

So if you are a large, multi-site organization focused on advanced reporting, this may be a good time to review the market and consider your options. I think there’s a better than even chance you’ll end up opting for transitioning to SiteCatalyst and (I hope) Discover. But I think it’s worth the time to evaluate your options.

Case 5: Serious HBX-User – Dissatisfied
You might have been dissatisfied with HBX for a variety of reasons including increasingly erratic service levels and declining customer support. But if your unhappiness stemmed from the weaknesses of the product to perform deep-dive analytics, then you are in this bucket.

Chances are, companies in this bucket were already considering a switch to Omniture or an upgrade/enhancement to Visual Site or Visual Workstation (probably the latter of these two VS options). In this class of company, the key driving factor is, in my opinion, the degree to which your analytic needs are driven by the necessity for integrating your private business data into web analytics.

If you are working primarily with web data or online data from systems like DART (or eMail, PPC, etc.), then I think your decision path is relatively straightforward. Transitioning to Omniture will provide your organization similar reporting capabilities, improved base-product analysis (SiteCatalyst) and a much cleaner upgrade to a true and powerful analyst’s workbench (Discover 2). In addition, Omniture has the richest online data integration options of any product in the market by far. So this direction should be a win in almost every respect.

I would NOT recommend moving to the Visual Workstation product prior to the transition. The interface is simply too different and too difficult to learn for a short-term commitment to make sense. I think companies in this category will be best off pushing aggressively to transition to SiteCatalyst and Discover.

If, on the other hand, you have significant private business data integration requirements and were considering Platform 5 as a possible solution, then your direction is less clear. Transitioning to SiteCatalyst and Discover isn’t necessarily going to solve these problems. It’s unclear what the long term integration direction for the VS software pieces will be. And it’s unclear how committed Omniture will be to the license model. Much of what I said earlier about companies evaluating product applies here as well. The acquisition introduces a significant element of uncertainty into the product direction – something that’s particularly unwelcome since these are the most costly and important implementations in the WA space.

For companies in this category, I think a careful review of direction is very appropriate before making any decisions. Depending on your needs and requirements, you might find that there just IS NOT an attractive solution in the market.

I would recommend studying carefully the possibility of moving information INTO the SiteCatalyst/Discover space. The analytic capabilities within this tandem are much richer than they were in HBX and you may also find that you have a significantly easier task getting the information there than you did with Visual Sciences. It’s worth a look but certainly not a solution for everyone.

Case 6: Existing Visual Site User – Dissatisfied
Chances are, if you were dissatisfied with the full Visual solution, it was because you were struggling with the GUI and the lack of robust enterprise reporting tools. Much of the previous discussion (in Case 5) applies here as well.

If you are working primarily within web and online data, you’ll probably be better off transitioning to the SC/Discover world. The analytic capabilities aren’t as rich, but the GUI is more standard and the reporting capabilities much, much better.

Unfortunately, if you require high-levels of data integration with private business data, you have to decide whether to stick with VS or go elsewhere. If you are already dissatisfied, I’d strongly consider going elsewhere. You can wait for Omniture to put a different GUI on Platform 5 – but who knows how long that wait will be or even it if will ever materialize. This is probably a good time to go back and review your product direction with a serious eye toward change.

Case 7: Existing Visual Site User – Satisfied
If you are happy and productive with the VS tool suite, then you have a somewhat different decision to make. Switching out of a tool you like when you don’t absolutely have to is always a difficult decision. This is especially true since it isn’t clear that there are any other products on the market that are really comparable.

If you are in this category, it probably makes sense to just wait for a while and see how the market develops. Since the Visual tools aren’t being immediately sunsetted, you don’t have the short-term pressure for change. You’re in a market niche that isn’t particularly well served at the moment. And you have opportunity to stay productive with a tool while seeing how the market evolves. Things could be worse.

I think this covers the most common set of cases when it comes to Visual Science customers – and I hope it provides a basic framework from within which companies can begin to evaluate their response intelligently. For most organizations that are at all serious about web analytics, I think the likeliest decision is probably just what you’d expect – transition to the SiteCatalyst/Discover world. So in my next post, I’m going to tackle in more depth some of the transition issues that need to be faced if, as I expect will be most common, you end up deciding to move in that direction.

Posted by Gary Angel 10/28/07

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What Does Web Analytics Consolidation, Fragmentation and Wal-Mart-ization Mean to You?

There has been plenty of discussion over the last few days about the consolidation of the web analytics marketplace due to the Omniture/Visual Sciences deal, and some comments on my last posting speculating about the future of Coremetrics and WebTrends.

What strikes me about the discussions of consolidation, is that the very concept is really more relevant if you invest in web analytics companies, rather than use their products.

I wanted to suggest a different theory based on the point of view of a web analytics consumer, rather than a web analytics investor: that the web analytics marketplace is not simply consolidating; it is in fact fragmenting, and there are plenty of options to consider if you are purchasing web analytics solutions.

From an offering prospective, Omniture has acquired two companies (Instadia and Visual Sciences) that are also based primarily on a SaaS/page tag collection model, and also focused on a large company customer base. In this vendor segment that leaves Coremetrics' and Fireclick, and IndexTools as the main competitors, and if you are in Europe, you could also include Nedstat. So within the SaaS/page tag segment of the market,you could say that there has been some consolidation from a company standpoint. However, unless you require complex segmentation, robust Excel reporting, tons of data processing and custom querying, in many respects the functionality is all comparable.

Now let's look at the segment of vendors that offer hybrid solutions, i.e., page tag/log files, SaaS and licensed options. Sadly, many web analytics consumers dismiss these as "log file" solutions...thanks in large part to the marketing hype of SaaS/page tag centric vendors, poor data processing reputation of first generation log file solutions, and reinforcement of others who have only "discovered" web analytics in the last 5 years. From a web analytics consumer perspective, having the potential advantages of hosting and controlling your own data, capturing web site performance data, and the flexibility of using tags for event tracking can be very attractive. ClickTracks, Unica, WebTrends are all worth considering as options...and all have impressive product development paths going forward.

And finally there will likely be quite a bit of activity in specialized web analytics tools for Web 2.0 content that will challenge the Wal-Mart concept of analytics that's become the status quo. I don't mean simply integrating different types of analytics methodologies, but new tools used to analyze evolving content and applications at more discreet levels than current offerings. At the recent eMetrics Summit and through the research I'm conducting for the next edition of the Web Analytics Report, I've learned about ClearSpring, a widget analytics tool, Visible Measures, a video analytics tool, and even an analytics solution for Second Life ad campaigns, called VTracker. And of course there are already existing blog specific analytics tools out in the market already.

Sure, the Wal-Mart, one-stop-shop oriented vendors enable you to track Web 2.0, but newer tools that are lightweight can address specific analytics questions with a lot less fuss than the "all in one" analytics packages. As we've seen with the parallel adoption of Google Analytics in companies that already possess analytics tools, Web 2.0 specific measurement may be another function that can be reported upon outside of the primary web analytics solution.

While its likely that the web analytics marketplace will see more consolidation, the "new wave" of specialty tools suggests more fragmentation at the lower end. And if you think about it, that has always been the life cycle within analytics...players come, players go, and vendors keep evolving the technology to keep up with what needs to be measured.

For perspective, consider that of the first generation analytics big dogs...NetGenesis, Accrue and WebTrends... only WebTrends is on the scene today. We'll see who survives intact on this ongoing evolution, and what new players will emerge. Having been in web analytics since 1996, I'll quote the French novelist Alphonse Carr, "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

So, enough rambling for now...I'm interested in hearing from you: What do you think about consolidation vs. fragmentation, and how are you using lighter tools with your "Wal-Mart" solutions? I look forward to reading your comments.

Posted by Phil Kemelor 10/28/07

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Omniture Acquires Visual Sciences: Don't Panic, But Don't Hide Your Head In The Sand

The announcement of Omniture's acquisition of Visual Sciences has created quite a stir. My advice is "Don't panic, but don't hide your head in the sand." Those of us immersed in web analytics are analysts, so let's analyze the situation.

For Visual Sciences clients, issues include moving to a new analytics platform with similar yet different features and capabilities, a different contract, different performance and a different support structure. While Omniture clients may assume that this won't affect them, they could be wrong. Omniture may be distracted by the effort to digest the Visual Sciences acquisition and performance and support may suffer. To aid the migration of Visual Sciences clients it may add features such as the HBX Report Builder which would be a very nice improvement.

With a larger customer base, Omniture may change its pricing structure. As Phil Kemelor points out in his Blog, Omniture's digestion of Visual Sciences is going to take some time and take some unexpected turns. (Omniture's digestion of Instadia's 200 clients is projected to take 18 months - how long will it take to digest Visual Sciences 2,000 clients).

Take advantage of the time it's going to take and take charge of your own fate - this advice is for both Visual Sciences and Omniture clients. What should you do?

  1. Make sure your analytic house is in order (both Visual Sciences and Omniture clients);
  2. Determine when and under what circumstances you want to migrate (Visual Sciences clients);
  3. Keep abreast of changes in web analytics platforms, both technical and contractual (both Visual Sciences and Omniture clients).

#1 Make Sure Your Analytic House Is In Order

  1. Using a structured perspective on your web metrics (business objectives to web KPIs to supporting statistics to application implementation) make sure that you are getting the information you need and you understand how your measurement application (Visual Sciences or Omniture) is providing that information;
  2. Make sure you have meaningful standards and conventions for your web measurement. If you don't have any or if they are inadequate initiate an effort to remedy that;
  3. Make sure that data collection is separated from data reporting and analysis. For example, if you are using an Excel interface, make sure that calculations and formatting for reporting and analysis are done in different worksheets than data collection.

#2 Determine When and Under What Circumstances You Want to Migrate
You got plenty of time, so take advantage of it and migrate when it makes sense for you. For example, if you are going from an HTML based web site to a Flash based web site, you are going to have to change your tagging for Flash whether you migrate or not so why not do the migration in conjunction with the move to Flash. If you don't have good web metrics standards and conventions, establish them and do their implementation as part of the migration. If you're not moving to a new web technology, don't need to improve your measurement standards and conventions, and don't need any new features, wait. "If it works, don't fix it." If you do migrate, consider out sourcing the migration, as it is not an expertise that you will need on an ongoing basis.

# 3 Keep Abreast of Changes in Web Analytics Platforms, Both Technical and Contractual.

Wait, watch, and listen. Monitor Omniture's digestion process of Visual Sciences for technical and contractual issues. Get your information not just from Omniture, but also from clients, analysts, and consultants. Also, keep abreast if what other vendors such as WebTrends are doing.

When migration makes sense for you -- technical, contractual, or support reasons -- make sure you know what you have, what you want and how your going to get there. Thus armed, migration may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. For Omniture clients, this may be a period of "interesting times" with lots of changes. Make sure you're set-up to take advantage of new features. Speak-up if performance or support suffers. Keep Omniture "honest" by monitoring industry developments.

You use your analytic skills to optimize your web site. Use them to optimize the Omniture acquisition of Visual Sciences for you.

Posted by Joel Hadary 10/26/07

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Scorched Earth in San Diego

It seems like all of Southern California is ablaze. And I don’t just mean the hellish fire consuming homes and causing epic dislocations. That’s a far more serious business than any we pursue in the normal course of our business lives. But the acquisition of Visual Sciences by Omniture completes the work of self-immolation pursued by the VS management team. They can put their gasoline cans away – their work is done.

If ever there was an example of one company being out-fought and out-thought at every turn by a rival, this has to be it. And the end result – this acquisition – only accelerates greatly the verdict that the market was increasingly making anyway.

But the wider implications for the analytic world will need much time to really see and understand.

Let’s consider first the customers of Visual Sciences. With HBX essentially in sunset mode, they will have to transition to Site Catalyst. This is far from a tragedy. Many of them were already considering such a move given the struggles at VS.

What’s involved in that move? Changing from an HBX tag to an Omniture tag is neither a complete slam-dunk nor a gigantic hurdle. The tags are structurally similar. And many decisions made with respect to HBX tags will carry over into the Omniture world. But this will take work. Don’t believe that you can use an automated translator and all will be as it should in the new world!

If you intend to actually get value out of the switchover, some portions of the tag need to be carefully re-thought. Some areas that have the biggest and most fundamental differences are Campaign Coding (especially if you were tagless), eCommerce coding and custom variables. Site Catalyst is much richer when it comes to custom variables – and you should take advantage of this when you transition or you’ll be crippling your implementation.

Beyond tagging, the two biggest concerns will probably be around reporting (all your ReportBuilder stuff will have to be moved and that WILL be a hassle – and you’ll need to reinvest in some training) and active segmentation. Site Catalyst ASIs are not the same as Active Segments. Well, they are. But you can’t use them the same way and if you try you will be sadly disappointed. Instead, if you are significant consumer of Active Segments you will have to transition to Discover. If you can afford it, you’ll want to go to Discover 2.x (especially if you use Active Segments for reporting more than research), and if you can’t, make sure you do get the Discover 1.5 version.

The VS clients that are going to be hardest hit are the ones with many sites and a heavy investment in reporting infrastructure. If you are a single site and aren't heavily invested in ReportBuilder, the transition probably shouldn't be too hard.

What about Visual Site and Visual Workstation? Well, if you didn’t make this transition, you should probably be counting your blessings. You’ll probably be better off in the Discover 2.x world anyway. Apparently, Omniture says they will continue this code line – with Discover supporting software-as-service implementations and VS technology supporting the potentially growing market for in-house processing.

I have a hard time believing that. Why Omniture would want to keep two completely different – wildly different – implementations and GUI’s around just to bridge these two worlds is, to me, obscure. Perhaps Omniture does need a non software-as-service offering. But, if so, it ought to be in Discover clothes – not some completely different outfit.

I’m betting at Omniture they already know that, and the VS product-line will be allowed to die a quick death. Maybe they needed to commit to the two-product direction to keep the VS management team on board, but those sorts of decisions don’t usually survive the first few months. We’ve all noticed that merger plans don’t always go the way the management teams expect!

But in this particular case it’s hard to believe the implications weren’t clear to everyone. If we were in ancient Rome, the VS management team would be falling on their swords.

So what exactly does Omniture get from this acquisition? It sure isn’t technology. Essentially, they get a boat load of customers. They get relieved of the necessity of aggressive pricing in bringing those large accounts into the fold. They get the opportunity to upsell all those accounts on a range of new products.

All of that’s important. They also get some relief across the board from competitive pricing pressures. Probably best of all, they make it much harder for a new strong number two to emerge. The longer VS was around, the more chance a WebTrends or Unica had to become a strong #2 challenger. Now, Omniture enjoys a massively dominant (instead of just clear leadership) position in the enterprise space – and that will make it much tougher for any other challenger to emerge.

And, of course, they really didn’t pay all that much. All in all, it looks like another pretty darn good move by the Orem crew.

Omniture has long preached their vision of the analytics space as being essentially bifurcated. Google Analytics at the low-end and Omniture at the enterprise level. To achieve that goal, they’ve blended excellent product, great sales, a cohesive team and – perhaps most important – the relentless pursuit of a strategic vision.

You don’t always need “that vision thing.” Many a war has been fought (and even won) without a great general. But the striking disparity in fortune between Omniture and Visual Sciences in the last 18-24 months – during a time of unparalleled growth and prosperity in our industry – shows just how important it can be. Starting at almost the same point two years ago, one has become a giant. The other burns upon a funeral pyre.

Posted by Gary Angel 10/25/07

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What does Omniture's purchase of Visual Sciences mean for HBX customers?

If you're a Visual Sciences customer, the news of the company's acquisition by Omniture must have come as somewhat of a surprise. Even though you've been waiting for the other shoe to drop since the July announcement that the company is for sale, to think that the company would be purchased by arch-rival Omniture is an interesting plot twist.

So, the question is, will you need to say good-bye to Report Builder, or Visual HBX, or any of the other aspects that you've liked about HBX? Well, as it's all speculation at this point, I'd say yes and no.

If history is a guide, we could view Omniture's acquisition of Instadia, a Swedish web analytics company, as a model for what the future holds for Visual Sciences customers.

Omniture acquired Instadia in January, 2007, and is still in the process of digesting them. The company's target for completing the migration of Instadia's ClientStep 200 clients to SiteCatalyst is pegged for June, 2008. However, its not clear how the migration is going. Early indications seemed to point to a relatively easy migration of data, but difficulty in matching up reports up between ClientStep and SiteCatalyst. I expect HBX customers could expect the same experience. (Are there are any former Instadia clients out there who could shed more light on this?)

So, if it's expected to take 18 months to migrate 200 customers, it will likely take a lot longer to migrate 2,000 customers, which is roughly the current HBX client base.

So, it's possible you may have your HBX implementation for a while yet.

What about the features in HBX? Again if Instadia can be used as an example, Omniture has claimed that it will be folding in ClientStep's much loved online survey feature into a new release. This hasn't yet happened, and it's not clear when it will.

Like pre-season predictions, it's time now to speculate on what the future holds, and in this case try to predict what Omniture will keep, or not keep, and what it uses to tweak its current offerings. My guess is that ultimately there's not a whole lot of the HBX product that they'll incorporate; Visual HBX will go away and the few customers using the platform will all get migrated to Datawarehouse and Discover.

That leaves the Visual Site platform, which will probably stay intact as a stand alone product offering because Omniture doesn't have anything like the technology.

You could say that the good news from a customer perspective is that Omniture knows web analytics, and therefore should be more attuned to customer needs than a company with little experience in the business. On the other hand, if you're a Visual Sciences customer, you probably had reasons for not selecting Omniture in the first place.

If you're a Visual Site or HBX customer, what do you think?

Posted by Phil Kemelor 10/25/07

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