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There has been a lot of buzz surrounding WebTrends over the last little while so yesterday I spoke with the Director of Product Marketing Matt Langie and CMO Tim Kopp to get insight on the latest rumblings at WebTrends:
Last week the CEO, VP of Products, VP of Corporate Development and VP of Engineering all left WebTrends. So I started by asking what the cause was for the departure of CEO Greg Drew and other executives. Matt replied that WebTrends’ parent company (Francisco Partners) and its board thought that there was some necessary changes had to be made in order continue with the strong growth. I was told that WebTrends has experienced double digit growth year over year for a number of years now. Brian Leblanc, Tim Kopp, Nick Sharp, John Rodkin and Leo Chang are all executives who are remain with WebTrends.
Bruce Coleman, who is the current CEO is actually only an interim CEO and WebTrends is actively looking for someone new to fill that role.
Next I asked whether or not WebTrends was looking to get acquired by Omniture and the answer was no. Apparently last week’s article in the Portland Business Journal was inaccurate and was misinterpreted from a conversation that was overheard. Furthermore Matt said that Francisco Partners usually looks for long terms investments and are confident in the WebTrends team.
Then I got their thoughts on the recent acquisition of Visual Sciences by Omniture and they replied that consolidation is a natural state of change and they look forward to the challenge. Matt added that WebTrends had a strong position in the market place which includes having the most customers and from a recent Forester Wave Report, WebTrends was declared #1 in categories such as Market Presence and Integration.
Finally, there was a rumor flying around at WebTrends Engage this year that WebTrends was considering selling the software version of their Analytics offering and this rumor was also put to rest by Matt Langie (as not true).
