Saas: Omniture and the Extended Enterprise

Omniture (OMTR) provides on-demand (SaaS) Web analytics solutions that if used effectively can be seen catering to the Enterprise 3.0 trend we discussed earlier.

It provides online business optimization software that can help capture, analyze, and manage data about marketing and sales in businesses that have both offline and online retail stores. Consider this scenario. A customer finds something of interest on an online store and buys it at their brick and mortar store. So the offline and online channels of a store are not independent.

As the boundaries between begin to blur, businesses find it important to measure and analyze cross-channel buying behavior. Omniture provides the analytics on data about customers across different channels. They help in providing this data across all levels in the organization so that informed decisions could be taken about marketing, pricing, product development, supply chain and inventory management.

Along with the data, Omniture also provides a configuration and management tool that helps the client manage the user access for individuals, groups, and functions. Optimum use of this tool would put vital information in the hands of the Extended Enterprise : manufacturers, suppliers, logistics service providers, etc.

Its clients include eBay, AOL, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Oracle, General Motors, Hewlett-Packard as well as Salesforce.com. The industries it caters to include automotive, financial services, media, retail, technology, and travel.

Omniture was founded in 1996 as SuperStats.com and in 2002 it came to be known as Omniture, Inc. It saw a growth of more than 100% for five years and has become a leader in the Web Analytics industry. It went public in June last year at a price of $6.5 and its stock price on 30^th May was $17.97 on NASDAQ and the market cap $883.28 million. In 2006, it posted revenue of $79.7 million, a growth of 86% over 2005. For the first quarter in 2007, it had revenue of $29.2 million, a 77% year-to-year quarterly growth and a 24% quarter-to-quarter growth. It is expected to achieve a sales growth of more than 50% by Dec 08.

Omniture acquired two companies in early 2007, Instadia and Touch Clarity. The acquisition of the Danish company Instadia has helped Omniture get a stronger foothold in the Nordic region and Germany. Touch Clarity, a behavioral targeting specialist, on the other hand, helps Omniture add a new dimension to their technology.

Overall, of the companies best positioned to capitalize on the SaaS+Extended Enterprise trends, Omniture is certainly a key one to watch.

This segment is a part in the series : Saas