WebTrends and Knosys Leverage Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services to Provide Visitor Relationship Management Solution

Business Wire, Oct 25, 2000

Business/High Tech Editors

PORTLAND, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 25, 2000

Partnership Broadens CommerceTrends OLAP Manager Offering,

Providing Comprehensive Web Visitor Analysis and

Segmentation to Power eMarketing Initiatives

WebTrends(R) Corporation (Nasdaq:WEBT) today announced a technology integration with Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq:MSFT) and Knosys, Inc., to broaden the CommerceTrends OLAP (online analytical processing) offering portfolio.

Leveraging the scalable data analysis capabilities of Microsoft's SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services with Knosys' powerful and easy to use visualization software, the CommerceTrends OLAP Manager provides eBusiness managers deeper multi-dimensional analysis to support better decision making.

This combination of state-of-the-art solutions will allow business managers to evaluate integrated web visitor and customer data captured by the CommerceTrends Visitor Relationship Management (VRM)(TM) Platform and analyze it with the CommerceTrends OLAP Manager, identifying potential target segments for marketing campaigns and other personalized interactions. With this powerful data analysis in hand, business managers have detailed insights into customer and web visitor preferences to conduct targeted marketing campaigns with eMarketing solutions built on the VRM platform. Through Knosys' integration with Microsoft Outlook, business managers can also view and analyze the collected data through Microsoft's Digital Dashboard, making the relevant web site visitor behavior and traffic measurements available directly on their desktop.

"Our relationship with Microsoft and Knosys continues to strengthen the data analysis capabilities of the CommerceTrends OLAP Manager, allowing eBusiness managers unparalleled choice and flexibility in their data analysis solution," said Eli Shapira, chief executive officer of WebTrends Corporation. "And with the unique capabilities of the Microsoft Digital Dashboard, critical web visitor information and preferences are at a business manager's disposal like never before."

"The combined CommerceTrends VRM Platform, Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services and Knosys ProClarity(R) solution provides enterprise agility and velocity by helping businesses better understand visitor preferences and effectively provide more personalized interaction," said John Eng, lead product manager, SQL Server, at Microsoft Corp. "This is an exciting offering for customers. The advanced capabilities of this combined solution provides businesses with time-to-market, scalability and reliability advantages."

"We are excited to be working with WebTrends to provide a fully optimized solution for eBusiness analysis to WebTrends customers," said Bob Lokken, president and chief executive officer of Knosys, Inc. "The CommerceTrends VRM Platform, combined with the analytical horsepower of Microsoft Analysis Services and the data visualization capabilities of ProClarity, provides customers with a complete and powerful eBusiness analysis solution."

Knosys ProClarity and Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services are two of the many leading eBusiness solutions supporting the CommerceTrends VRM platform. By integrating advanced clickstream data with other sources of enterprise data like CRM systems, the VRM Platform provides business managers insight into visitor behavior and preferences, providing the ability to customize functionality through personalization, marketing automation and content management solutions. The VRM Platform provides the most powerful data analysis and visitor intelligence reporting available, enabling organizations to initiate, build and enhance the relationships with their web site visitors. Its advanced functionality includes enterprise-scalable web traffic analysis, campaign management, revenue forecasting, eMarketing return on investment, visitor and buyer qualification, database integration and web data warehouse capabilities.

The CommerceTrends OLAP Manager leverages the technology from Knosys ProClarity, which integrates advanced analytical capabilities into the Office 2000 environment. The ProClarity Analytical Platform, with its component-based architecture and open object model, enables organizations to build customized analytical capabilities into presentation tools, planning documents, spreadsheets and intranet sites. Data is accessed more easily, information is viewed more dynamically and decisions made with clarity and speed. The ProClarity OLAP Client automatically builds interactive analytics into web sites, PowerPoint 2000 presentations or Microsoft Outlook 2000-based Digital Dashboards. With the Add-In for Microsoft Excel, Excel users can interact with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services to express complex business models and reports.

Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services enables users to perform sophisticated analysis on large volumes of data with exceptional data retrieval performance times. Data sources can include any OLE database provider, such as SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, other relational databases and flat files. Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services has a client-side cache and calculation engine called Microsoft PivotTable Service, which helps improve performance and reduce network traffic. PivotTable Service also enables users to conduct analyses while disconnected from the corporate network.