Comments for Aaron Gray // Greater Returns

Comment on Change Rolls in Like Thunder by Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:48:48 +0000

Thanks, Amber! I’m already having a great time. It’s only going to get better.

Comment on Change Rolls in Like Thunder by Amber Brucker (@AmberBrucker)

Amber Brucker (@AmberBrucker) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:38:09 +0000

All the best to you, Aaron. Sounds like you’re going to be working with some great people in the future.

Comment on Thoughts on Salesforce acquiring Radian6 by Aaron

Aaron — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:37:38 +0000

Rand: I’d think if they were interested they would have done it by now. I’d sooner bet on MSFT buying Adobe.

Comment on Thoughts on Salesforce acquiring Radian6 by Rand Schulman

Rand Schulman — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:21:22 +0000

They will not but MS should / could. But then, they’ve had a chance for the last decade.

Rand Schulman

Comment on Thoughts on Salesforce acquiring Radian6 by marketing automation

marketing automation — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 19:06:26 +0000

Thanks for bringing this acquisition to my attention Aaron, I wasn’t aware of it. Yes, we’ve been watching this space closely. It was interested to see Salesforce.com invest in Hubspot as well. However, this was an investment not an acquisition. It will be interesting to see how Salesforce.com handles these new acquisitions. For example, with Jigsaw.com they still remain mostly a separate entity. How do you think they’ll handle Radiant6 or a marketing automation company?

Comment on Why the Omniture Adobe Deal May be Brilliant by Web Data Takes Another Step Out of the Web Analytics Department « Greater Returns // Aaron Gray

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 14:04:10 +0000

[...] that Adobe is carrying on Omniture’s mission to build a complete online marketing suite, as I predicted they would when I first wrote about the [...]

Comment on Why the Omniture Adobe Deal May be Brilliant by Aaron

Aaron — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:25:10 +0000

Adron: Obviously I’d be curious to know what you know but can’t divulge. When you say that it was “of a far simpler nature” than we may realize, I don’t know if you mean that from a technology perspective, or a business perspective. If it’s from a business perspective, I suspect that you mean it from Omniture’s point of view — i.e. they realized either a.) they couldn’t grow any more without help; or b.) they realized they didn’t have the capital or the time or the talent to integrate all of the technologies they acquired over the last few years.

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.

Comment on Why the Omniture Adobe Deal May be Brilliant by Adron

Adron — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:12:58 +0000

Even though I’m late posting to this entry, as you obviously know Aaron, I’ve been watching the merger closely also.

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.

Comment on Why the Omniture Adobe Deal May be Brilliant by Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:12:17 +0000

Michael: I think this is a strategic move on a long-term vision. You are absolutely right that Adobe now has the challenge of maintaining and growing the Omniture customer base while the slow transition to embedded solution takes place. In the process, Adobe will have to figure out what the new business model is for monetizing the collection of page views, and how to make that transition. To make the transition successfully, though, they needed the category leader. Category leadership is an asset most people don’t fully appreciate the value of. It’s incredibly difficult to lose once you have it, unless you really, really screw up. When you buy the category leader, you buy incredible strength in the market, and it is not something that can be achieved by competing at the product feature level.

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.

Comment on Why the Omniture Adobe Deal May be Brilliant by Rudi Shumpert

Rudi Shumpert — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:45:41 +0000

Aaron,

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

-Rudi