Is WebTrends Next?

As I wrote in my previous post…this will get interesting…apparently sooner than later.

Several key executives from WebTrends were quietly relieved of duty yesterday, including Greg Drew (CEO) and Jason Palmer (VP Product Marketing). A visit to the management page of the WebTrends site this morning shows a new face – Bruce T. Coleman as Chief Executive Officer.

Coleman serves as CEO of El Salto Advisors, an interim executive firm, and held short-term executive posts at Vernier Networks (2004), Stamps.com (2000-2001), Rogue Wave Software (1999 – 2000) and Websense (1998 – 1999) foreshadowing a short stay with WebTrends and a likely sale of the company.

Many eyes will turn to Omniture as a prime suspect to buy WebTrends and dominate the analytics market because of their recent acquisition of Visual Sciences, but that deal is scheduled to complete sometime in mid 2008, so they may have their hands full at the moment. Certainly Coremetrics and Unica are keenly watching the consolidation of their peers, yet a new entrant to the marketplace, (i.e., Content Management Vendor), would create an interesting challenge for the analytics incumbents.