But of course, the acquisition is a reminder that Web analytics is not Unica’s primary business line – marketing automation and campaign management is. And with the acquisition, IBM adds another piece to a formidable online marketing suite.
For several years prior to its acquisition by Adobe, Omniture was selling a vision of a complete online marketing suite – and working in that direction with the acquisition or development of tools for PPC management, internal search optimization, behavioral targeting, and multivariate testing. That vision has been expanded and changed by the Adobe acquisition. But while Adobe offers some of the same pieces (and some additional ones), the integration of design components with measurement and marketing automation has always been more of a stretch.
IBM is doing the same thing, but at a whole nother level of operations. IBM now provides one of the leading ecommerce and site serving platforms, one of the leading full statistical analysis packages, one of the leading BI and data mining tools, two of the top web analytics tools, and one of the leading online campaign management and marketing automation tools. That’s a heck of an Online Marketing Suite.
Of course none of this stuff is integrated. And, as I’ve written before (with somewhat bewildering regularity as the pace of acquisitions accelerates), acquisitions are a risky business particularly when you are absorbed into a behemoth like IBM.
And within our little space, the fact of two web analytics tools within that suite is particularly troubling. These are two fundamentally similar tools but with substantial differences in architecture and design. It’s unclear how or why there would be any integration path or logical co-existence between them.
When Omniture bought Visual Sciences, I agreed with the prevailing view that HBX visitors would be easily transitioned into SiteCatalyst users. The two systems were very close in design and function with SiteCatalyst being superior in most respects. The situation is a little different with Unica’s NetInsight and Coremetrics.
Yes, the two systems are fundamentally similar. But if you bought NetInsight for its open database, on-premise solution, soft-tag or single UI solution, you’re not likely to be excited about a move to Coremetrics. And if you picked Coremetrics for its strong retail support, rich attribution reporting, or benchmarking capabilities, NetInsight probably isn’t going to be your platform of choice. But it’s hard to imagine why one company – even IBM – would support both for the long term.
IBM clearly has a vision for this space. And they are obviously deeply committed to that vision. They paid a hefty premium for Unica. That’s great – and I think the acquisition makes perfect sense on many levels.
I’m not quite prepared to say that IBM is the #1 online marketing and analytics suite – post title notwithstanding. The tools are too discrete and there isn’t yet a clear vision of how the pieces all fit together. They’ll need to show the market where this is all going and make the integration points clearer and less painful than they are. And, of course, they’ll need some kind of strategy around a web analytics tool. But if IBM isn’t quite yet the number one vendor in the enterprise space, it’s pretty obvious that they have most of the necessary pieces to be the number one vendor. And in some ways, those pieces give them the potential not simply to be the leader, but to be far ahead of their competitors.
Which brings me to back to the one point of the deal that I find troubling. I’m thinking IBM didn’t buy Unica for NetInsight – else they wouldn’t have bought Coremetrics. So while the deal makes sense in adding a leading (and excellent) enterprise marketing automation solution to IBM’s practice, it leaves IBM with one too many traditional web analytics solutions. That’s bad news for somebody.
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