If (b) above is what you mean, I don’t think they ever intended to integrate them all. Exit strategy = “buy all the ingredients, become category leader, sell to someone with deeper pockets and better talent, let them do the hard work.” Not a bad strategy.

I’m also privy to some information that I can’t divulge, but let it be known, the merger was of a far simpler nature than a lot of people realize.

As for the synergies, those are very interesting, and at the same time very confusing. The technology stacks do conflict and complement each other. If there ever was a company good at merging conflicting technologies together though, Adobe definitely has that experience.

My biggest interest out of the whole scenario is exactly how will they implement these things into their existing tool sets to complement the new analytics featuresets.

Also, perhaps I didn’t emphasize this enough, but I think that these may be building blocks to an entirely new product or solution set. Omniture’s been attempting to build the perfect marketing optimization suite for a long time, and the thing that has been missing is content management and delivery (with a runtime component). Adobe has intellectual assets and financial resources to finish delivering that vision.

Ultimately, there are multiple ways Adobe can monetize the Omniture infrastructure, both as a direct product, and as embedded functionality in existing and new products.

As for Microsoft…well, who knows.

I think you’re spot on with this. Great thoughts and insight on the merger.

-Rudi

An interesting post. I can see your point.

I have several comments/questions to make.

First, if Adobe was in the market for a web analytics tool to “provide performance measurement data at the asset level” (as you put it) then why go for a player the size of Omniture?

$1.8bn is a hell of a price to pay for providing integrated measurement on your applications.
In addition, I don’t believe Omniture is the ideal tool for measuring such applications in the first place.
I think Adobe would have been better off buying a smaller vendor such as UK-based Speed Trap with their proprietary tag-less app/Flash measurement method (perhaps Adobe never heard of them before).

Second, if it was for the stable revenue stream – well – that now seems under (a little) more threat as GA and YWA have upped the game (side note: I believe that post GA v4 the key differentiator will turn from feature set to customer support – all the paid solutions will have to get better at it).

In addition, the association with Adobe might deter potential Omniture clients concerned about the direction of future product development. Will Adobe be as committed to the other Omniture Suite products such as SearchCenter, Merchandising, behavioural targeting and MVT.

Hand it to Josh James – he got this deal timed to a tee. Four weeks later and I somehow doubt Adobe would pay $1.8bn. Insight or luck? Perhaps a little of both.

I have no inside contact to the key players on this deal. So I can only offer my speculative thoughts.

Omniture were shopping for a buyer for some time now.
As for Adobe, I’m speculating they are positioning themselves as a potential acquisition target for someone like Microsoft.

Microsoft can now take out two birds in one go. First and foremost, eliminating the key competitor to Silverlight. At the same time they can get hold of an advance analytics tool to put them on par with Google and Yahoo.

But I could be getting this all wrong. Time will tell.

Thanks,
Michael

Michael Feiner
AEP Convert