IBM bought Coremetrics

1) How soon before Webtrends get bought and by who - noone seemed to want to buy them a while back (SAP/Oracle/Autonomy/Microsoft?)

2) IBM should have a good end to end marketing message - realistically are there going combine Core with their other products (other than websphere) in any short time, I think not.

3) It doesn't change the current Core message. Coremetrics always traded on their close partnership with IBM. Unless IBM pump money into Core (which they wont) the offering will remain relatively the same - i.e. a relatively underfunded and underdeveloped solution that makes sense only due to its ties with other products.

4) I do hope that IBM's process, acumen and money does bring some good fortunes for Core, they've seemed to be in a mess for a while.

I'm a fan of diversification. I hope this is good for the industry.

My concern is that a significant vendors strides forwards in this space will actually be hampered as IBM take their eye of the ball.

I predict Webtrends will get purchased in the next 6 months and then within the space of 3 years there will be a new diversification of analytics companies hanging their hat on something slightly different, my guess is it will be the social media / mobile phone apps trendy bunch who will go through that "lets build a company, lets get data, what do we do with it now? lets sell the company" cycle, maybe IBM will buy them too.