NetIQ Revamps WebTrends Brand, Product Lineup

In an effort to digest the product lineup of a recent acquisition, infrastructure analytics firm NetIQ is making product line and branding tweaks to onetime competitor WebTrends.

The effort comes about following the closure of January’s $925.6 million stock purchase of Portland, Ore.-based WebTrends. Through the changes, San Jose, Calif.-based NetIQ is keeping the well-known WebTrends brand name, but otherwise making significant alterations to the way WebTrends positions its suite of Web traffic analysis products.

NetIQ’s WebTrends Analysis Series will include WebTrends’ Log Analyzer, Professional Suite and Enterprise Suite products, in a lineup aimed at small and medium sized businesses looking for bare-bones traffic analysis tools.

Also among the changes is a rebranding of WebTrends’ original Enterprise Reporting Server, to WebTrends Reporting Center. The product provides a step up in functionality from the Analysis product, tracking banner ad click-throughs and e-commerce shopping behavior. The product is available in e-business, enterprise, and service provider editions, correlating to ascending levels of complexity in reporting and management.

Thirdly, under the new product arrangement, WebTrends’ most advanced offering, CommerceTrends, is renamed WebTrends Visitor Relationship Management Solutions — evincing a new focus on marketing and CRM clients. The product line, which combines information from site visitors with other sources of data, could foreseeably link visitor information with sales databases to measure results from an on- or offline advertising or sales push, or to automate online marketing or CRM campaigns.

WebTrends’ ASP product, Live, will remain untouched.

As part of the rebranding, NetIQ revamped WebTrends’ logo as well as its home page, in an effort to funnel prospective clients into one of the three main product areas.

NetIQ management painted the changes as a way to simplify the company’s offerings, paring WebTrends’ products down to four categories, based on client size and needs.

“Clarifying the names and functionality of our product lines ensures that our customers are able to quickly and easily identify which WebTrends solution best fits their specific e-business intelligence needs,” said NetIQ senior vice president of products Tom Kemp. “This revised lineup, new Web site and new logo illustrates the company’s commitment to building equity in the WebTrends brand and delivering the right solutions to meet our customers demands.”

The changes also serve to differentiate the mass of products now under the NetIQ name. With the rebranding effort, NetIQ is aiming to distinguish Web traffic-focused products — under the WebTrends rubric — from its own Windows- and NT-based products, which focus on network infrastructure administration, reporting and analysis.