It is true that many of our competitors compete with us on price because that’s all they have to compete with us on. And we believe that kind of competition actually works in our favor. Some tools are even free as many of you know, which we do not view as negative. In fact, the company with the purported best free analytics tool placed a major order with Omniture in the second quarter, and that is probably the best estimate of all to the differentiation of Omniture from the free analytics tools.

Interestingly enough, we believe the reason these companies provide free analytics tools is so their customers who advertise in their platforms can convert visitors more effectively so they can afford to pay more for advertising. Well, that’s exactly what we do. We hope our customers convert visitors more effectively. Except that we do it for enterprise customers and mid market customers, and the providers of the free analytics tool will do it for the long end of the tail. Actually, we believe that over time we will develop closer partnering relationships with the major search engines and advertising platforms since our goal is so similar. If they are confident in their technology, they should want their customers to have objective analytics that encourage more spend on the most effective platforms.

More info: Omniture posts wider 2nd-quarter loss, even as sales more than double

Here are some notable changes (taken from Jupiter Research):

Omniture Discover OnPremise will utilize the Visual Sciences Platform 5 technology and page tags from VS can populate SiteCatalyst data, which will appear in the integrated interface. Omniture will maintain its legacy Omniture Discover (hosted) segmentation solution.

Omniture’s Search Center now appears under the header of Site Search and Content, where they wasted no time in incorporating Visual Sciences’ Publish Web Content Management Solution.

The popular HBX Analytics solution will be rebranded as Omniture SiteCatalyst HBX. Although HBX should be placed on an endangered species list, because the product will likely be phased out. Omniture states that HBX, “will continue to be supported until the key features have been integrated into Omniture SiteCatalyst”. HBX has had a long ride, from Hitbox to WebSideStory’s HBX, to Visual Sciences’ HBX and now Omniture. It looks like it’s finally time to retire the jersey and move on.

The combination of Omniture and Visual Sciences creates a company with substantial scale and resources to deliver industry leading products and services that address the rapidly expanding online business optimization market. The combined company will be able to accelerate investments, meet a wider set of customer needs through a richer solution set and have a significantly greater opportunity to grow into new markets.