As part of the alliance, Akamai has extended its business intelligence capabilities with the introduction of Akamai SiteWise, a new service that integrates NetIQ’s WebTrends Live technology to provide real-time Web reporting and analysis for business decision makers including marketing executives, Internet business managers, Web developers, and IT professionals to maximize the effectiveness of their Web campaigns and measure the results of their e-business efforts.
According to the Aberdeen Group, the total market for Web analytics is expected to grow to more than $4 billion in 2004. The market for service-based Web analytics is expected to reach $500 million in 2003. This growth reflects, in part, the critical role business intelligence plays in helping companies measure the impact of their Web efforts to allocate IT dollars accordingly.
Through the powerful analytics technology and expertise of WebTrends, SiteWise is designed to put that intelligence directly in the hands of the decision makers so that they can gauge the impact of their sales and marketing efforts in real time, said John Shumway, general manager, platform services,
The SiteWise service is also designed to become a major complement to and component of Akamai’s EdgeSuite offering, which meets a full spectrum of next-generation content delivery requirements. The EdgeSuite offering incorporates functionalities for whole Web site delivery, dynamic page assembly, streaming media delivery, geo-location and personalization, local and global load balancing, and business intelligence. The SiteWise service aims to help EdgeSuite customers better understand Web usage patterns and take advantage of EdgeSuite’s functionality for dynamic Web page assembly, providing the richest, most intuitive online experience for end users.
The Akamai SiteWise service offers over one hundred types of reports that provide browser-side insight into the behavior and preferences of Web site visitors (without collecting any personally identifiable information), including:
The ability to track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
Real-time feedback on new and returning visitors.
Analysis of which areas of the site are driving the most traffic.
Reporting on demographics, such as country and language.
E-commerce information including conversion from visitors to buyers.
Revenue tracking.
As an additional component of the alliance, NetIQ will incorporate Akamai’s content delivery and geo-location services to dramatically enhance the performance and functionality of WebTrends Live and WebTrends software. To enhance its own offerings, NetIQ will leverage Akamai’s EdgeScapeSM geo-location service to provide its customers with more detailed geographic and network performance information about their Web visitors. WebTrends will also employ Akamai’s FreeFlowSM content delivery service to place key WebTrends Live data geographically closer to its users, substantially improving the efficiency of content delivery.
