Omniture to Acquire Visual Sciences

October 26th, 2007 by Lars

I’ve joked about it for a while, and now it has come true—Omniture gobbles up Visual Sciences. I’ve said it before and will say it again: these are interesting times. This is huge news.

If it hasn’t already, WebTrends must feel the heat now. I predict that an IPO or a sale will be a reality within half a year.

Looking at the European market, I think some vendors really need to make up their minds whether they truly want to show a presence here. Other than Omniture (soon including Visual Sciences) and WebTrends, players like Coremetrics and ClickTracks don’t show enough presence in Europe if they want to build for long-term success over here.

And how are European vendors going to stay competitive if not solely by focusing on price? Omniture’s development muscles will be hard to match.

Read this analysis and apply it to web analytics:
Bye-bye Little BI

Bryan Eisenberg expressed hopes for industry standards thanks to the acquisition. While I think Omniture made a wise move and have no doubt that the acquisition is right for it, I must question whether it’s good for the web analytics industry. If one player becomes too dominant, how will that affect innovation? In the short term, I’m sure it’ll force competitors to be more innovative, but will that help if they simply don’t have enough money in the bank? I’m not so sure that I want an SAP of web analytics. Competition tends to be a good thing.

Read this analysis and apply it to web analytics:
Business Objects and SAP: the good, the bad and the ugly

So what will happen with HBX Analytics now? My guess is that it doesn’t really fill any empty spot in Omniture’s portfolio and will be discontinued, much like the company plans on discontinuing Instadia ClientStep. Visual Site will probably be integrated into Discover somehow.

There’s a second part to the joke I’ve been telling. It goes like this: OMTR acquires all its competitors just to get acquired by someone like Oracle or SAP.

Plenty of speculation abounds, but one thing is a fact—these are exciting times.