Andromedia's Scalable Technology Could Prove Significant Competition

A new technology promises to deliver real-time web site tracking and monitoring information something that analysts say could help it beat out competitors to become the market leader.

The technology come from Andromedia, a fledgling firm that was founded in December. Andromedia plans to introduce its first product, called the "Aria World Wide Web Recording and Reporting System", which is based on the technology, in early September.

"Companies still have a fundamental concern about collecting huge amount of date from he server. Those with large amounts don't think there are off-the-shelf tools [which] can deal adequately with the volume of information," said Kent Godfrey, president and CEO of Andromedia, Inc. "We think that opens the market for us, and our technology gives us an advantage. Most products start with a log file, which has limitations. We capture information at the end of a server transaction, which offers greater reporting flexibility."

Industry analysts agree. "This product has great functionality. It has raised the bar, and competitors will have to respond to stay competitive," said Ted Julian, an analyst with International Data Corp. (IDC). "Scalability and the ability to offer real-time tracking, both of which this product has, will rapidly become necessary features for any product in this category."

It's a category that industry executives and analysts say will grow quickly as companies increasingly look for more detailed information on how their web sites are performing.

"Our target market is the 300,000+ web sites that Netscraft believes will grow to more than a half million by the end of the year," said Godfrey. "We think that 18 to 25 months from now, man of these individual web sites will have more significant traffic and will need better reporting to maximize their effectiveness."

Godfrey believes products such as Aria also will become essential to intranet sites as well, which currently represent a fast-growing market. However, he admitted that "we, and others, still have some learning to do about what the detailed differences are between internets and intranets from the perspective of the products." As a result, the firm plans to study the market and possibly partner to create reports tailored to the needs of this market.

Seeking Partners

Such partnerships are a fundamental part of Andromedia's strategy. In fact, the firm sees very few of the companies already in the market as competitors. It views them as potential partners.

"Partners will be able to create applications based on Andromedia's technology that meet the needs of vertical markets, such as advertising management," explained Scott Capdevielle, chief technology officer for Andromedia.

"If you want to rotate ads after 10,000 impressions, our system can help track that mark, rotate the ad out, and put in a new ad," said Godfrey. "But we don't want to build these ourselves; we want to partner with companies like Net.Gravity and I/PRO that most people may think are competitors."

Although no such deals have been negotiated thus far, the idea may have merit. An I/PRO spokeswoman confirmed that the companies have had meetings and that I/PRO ha seen the Aria technology and does not view it as competition. She emphasized, however, that no deals between the firms had been discussed.

Meanwhile, Andromedia also is seeking distribution partners. It recently closed such a deal with K2 Design Inc.

Under terms of the distribution deal, K2 will sell a co-branded version of the Aria system called VisiTrac. The firms many collaborate on specific applications.

How It Works

The Aria system is made up of several major components, including the Aria monitor, Aria recorder, Aria report, Aria store, and Aria API.

The monitor resides on the web server and tracks all traffic on the site. Rather than relying on site logs, it captures all information passed between a browser and the server and sends that data to the Aria recorder. "We designed the monitor to be very light so it doesn't impede the performance of the server," said Capdevielle.

The recorder can reside on the web server or on a separate server even on in a different location. The recorder turns the data into objects and stores them. The technology is based on a scalable, multithreading system that can coordinate data from several sites, mirror sites for example, and pass it to the store.

The Aria store accepts the objects from the recorder and stores them in a database. It updates the data every five seconds, allowing users to generate reports in real time.

The Aria API defines size object classes that data is sorted into, including visitor, visitor aggregate, content, content aggregate, server, and category intersections. Developers can use the API to create other objects of access particular objects through C++ or Perl. A Java-based interface will be part of the 1.1 release of the product.

The reporter is a tool that allows users to create graphs, generate reports, and manipulate the data.

The product will cost $1,800 to $35,000, depending on hit volume and system configurations. The system currently supports Netscape [NSCP] Navigator, Microsoft [MSFT] Internet Explorer, Mosaic, and Spyglass [SPYG] Mosaic, as well as Sun [SUNW] Solaris and Sun SPARC systems. Contact Andromedia at (415) 278-0705.