Exceptions? Maybe Microsoft and its Xbox360

Don’t forget that they acquired Visual Sciences last year and since then, they’ve been integrating quite fast.
This integration, as Jim McIntyre showed during the eMetrics in Washington – you were there as well, were you? – shows a Web Analytics roadmap for companies, stretching for longer periods of time.

As you might have understood from my posts – and this was also repeated by George Anidjar during his Unica presentation – I’m starting to consider that as products are actually getting quite similar, changing products between for example major leaders like Omniture, WebSideStory or Coremetrics is not really worth the hassle. The learning curve remains steep.

What I like about VS is that they are not only aware of this but are also looking into the future. They have a vision of how Analysis could actually enter the boardroom in order to truthfully and rapidly respond to questions that might be asked.
This long term vision unfolds itself within the migration path of worldwide customers between the current HBX and how VS sees the future.

The thing is, and I’m really sorry to disappoint you, that the technological barriers are not really the problem but the mentality barriers are very much a reality today. I witness it daily!
Therefore, Europe and certainly France are utterly not ready at all for Visual Sciences.
Reason enough for me to be present at the 1er eMarketing Forum as WSS & HBX and only mention VS. But indeed, they could have done some design effort

Overall, I thought the presentations were interesting, except for the 3rd one. I really, really have a problem with their solution and philosophy!
Weborama was an interesting way to see WA from a more advertiser perspective, unica showed the integrated view and WebSideStory shows a reassuring long term solution.
We’ll be posting soon about what we saw, together with Julien, in Paris yesterday. I just haven’t had the time due to the flue, sorry.

Let me know of your thoughts, kind regards & good evening from Brussels,
Aurélie

If they’re aiming for the so cool GOW spirit, why not build up the marketing buzz and time their launch with the PS3? Or might they loose their audience…

Hey, this could maybe compensate for the A4 color printed paper stuck on the wall at the 1er eMarketing Forum

Keep it real.

Well I’m happy to see that your pricing structure can accomodate smaller budgets. Again, I was basically quoting hearsay (which maybe I should never do ).

I loved your characterization of my enthusiasm (“Jumping up and down with excitement, eyes tinkling and proud as a ponitailed peacock”) and was happy to see your review of our technology and the demonstration I was able to provide to you and Rene. I also love that you and Rene clearly “get” what I’m talking about when I evangelize the process through which web analytics makes companies successful. While some criticize my call for process in web analytics, I think in the long-run companies will see the value of this vision and make investments accordingly.

I did want to correct one common misconception that some folks have about Visual Sciences, one that Jacques Warren brought up — the notion that Visual Site is “darn expensive.” While we offer a managed services option that allows companies to deploy our technology without deploying software themselves–an offering that is functionally similar to any other tag-based implementation–we sell licensed software and thusly offer a variety of pricing options. Companies familiar with Enterprise software purchasing will recognize our term and perpetual licensing models, our managed or in-house deployment options, and make the choice that is most appropriate for their needs at the time.

Our belief is that when prospects make apples-to-apples comparisons and examine these costs on a two- to three-year time horizon, that our prices are actually very reasonable. The challenge is to ensure that our competitors include pricing for functionality that we provide as standard in every Visual Site deployment–including unlimited data warehouse access, unlimited visitor segmentation capabilities, the unlimited ability to generate custom reports, native controlled experimentation functionality, etc.

Regardless, I was delighted to provide you and Rene (and many others at Emetrics) a demonstration of our technology. Yeah, I’m pretty proud of what our customers are able to do with Visual Site–I’d be crazy not to be. And I will be out there doing my best to evangelize realistic strategies for companies to create value from their investment in web analytics, regardless of which vendor they work with.

I promise.

Sincerely,

Eric T. Peterson
http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/weblog

Wow! VS again. You’re certainly adding to the legend. I wish they would do a demo for me, but all I’m hearing are strories getting close to cult ones!! BTW, I heard that VS is very high end in terms of pricing (i.e. darn expensive). Do you have any idea? As disruptive as they can be, not all businesses (and I mean large ones here) have reached the point where it make sense to invest huge amounts on WA (or they just still lightyears from recognizing they should). I have myself been fighting for over 4 years with budgets, but WA is still very much under funded, and will be for some time still. So, the best app can be the best, but it also comes to how concretely we can expect to implement it if it’s always off the charts price wise.