CMS Watch HB Feed

Cold Banana?

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Tue, 5 Aug 2008 16:10:00 -0400

We've been following Web CMS vendor Hot Banana for some time now. The little Barrie, Ontario start-up challenged pre-eminent ColdFusion-based vendor PaperThin with a somewhat simpler and very marketing-oriented offering.

Then online marketing roll-up vendor JL Halsey came calling, and Hot Banana agreed to get acquired. A thinly-capitalized former health-care company, JL Halsey was best known for its flagship Lyris e-mail marketing package and ultimately assumed that name. Then, as readers of The Web CMS Report 2008 know, Hot Banana seemed to stall a bit; customers complained of poor support and some internal disarray. Lately we've heard of a couple would-be buyers struggling to get Hot Banana's attention amid rumors of staff turnover and a difficult transition to a SaaS-based delivery model.

Turnover and organizational change are part of life in any software company, but something here is setting off little alarm bells in the back of my head.

You see, roll-ups are tricky: they seem so promising, but "synergies" among different products (in this case, really different companies) rarely pan out, and when it comes time to meet real quarterly revenue numbers, things can get tough. I don't know entirely what's going inside Hot Banana (they won't return our messages), but if you're considering them as a supplier, you'll want to make sure you perform careful diligence first.

Update: 07 August -- a Lyris exec e-mailed us declaring Hot Banana alive and well. We'll offer an update after the company's forthcoming quarterly SEC filing.

Lyris HQ links ClickTracks, CMS, and E-mail marketing

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 23:52:00 -0500

Lost in the news about the dust-up at WebTrends and aftershocks from the Omniture/Visual Sciences acquisition was the announcement that Lyris, Inc. (formerly J.L. Halsey), the parent company to ClickTracks, launched its Lyris "HQ" platform and BidHero, a PPC campaign management solution.

The core of the Lyris platform, according to the company, is in management of the various products -- ClickTracks, Hot Banana content management, BidHero, EmailLabs email marketing, and EmailAdvisor, a email delivery monitoring tool -- from a single user interface.

Lyris has done quite a bit of work to bring this integration to fruition, and if it lives up to its promise, could be a nice solution to the SMB market or independent divisions at larger companies.

As we've noted the importance of working with web analytics vendors with a commitment to a product roadmap, it appears that Lyris is following through on their vision. But for you the customer the story is of course a bit more complicated. Picking a "suite" of tools almost always means sacrificing a poor fit in one area or another in exchange for a (potentially) unified interface and single vendor invoice...

ClickTracks CEO moving on

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 14:49:00 -0400

With little fanfare, ClickTracks' CEO John Marshall is leaving his post to pursue other opportunities. This perhaps isn't too surprising considering that ClickTracks was purchased in August by e-marketing roll-up company, J.L. Halsey. Marshall founded ClickTracks with Stephen Turner in 2000 and focused on analytics for the SMB market. In my research for The Web Analytics Report and subsequent chats, I found Marshall to be the most accessible web analytics vendor CEO in the market; someone who didn't mind explaining the finer points about ClickTracks data processing, storage, and query model -- as well as web analytics issues in general. He didn't just talk about product usability; he tried to guide the company to focus on user experience as a critical part of its feature set. This led to the development of a highly graphical interface and a well regarded visitor segmentation capability...features that still stand out.

There are no plans to replace Marshall, according to an e-mail I received from Loren McDonald, J.L. Halsey's VP Corporate Communications. In line with their strategic plan to transition from a holding company toward a single, integrated firm, J.L. Halsey is moving away from CEOs/GMs of the acquired companies toward centralized functions, such as sales, marketing, engineering, support, product management, and HR.

Without Marshall's focus on innovation, it will be interesting to see how J.L. Halsey addresses the increasing competition from Google Analytics, as well as how it will integrate ClickTracks' with other J.L. Halsey companies such as CMS vendor HotBanana, email marketing vendors Lyris, EmailLabs, and SparkList.

J.L. Halsey acquires Hot Banana

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 08:34:00 -0400

The playfully-named web content management vendor Hot Banana announced an acquisition by J.L. Halsey Corporation earlier this week (at the same time, ClickTracks Analytics was scooped up as well). We got to know Ontario, Canada-based Hot Banana over the past year, and the forthcoming tenth edition of our CMS Report will feature a full evaluation of the product. A simple WCMS with integrated analytics and the mission of providing effective micro-applications to marketers, it makes sense that J.L. Halsey (a provider of "marketing technology solutions" to mid-market businesses) would want to add HB to their arsenal. Still, we're surprised Hot Banana's owners cashed out so early, given the company was just starting to show real growth south of the 49th parallel. We also question J.L. Halsey's rollup strategy: a lot of small, distributed companies don't necessarily make a cohesive marketing product suite, especially if they lack integration. We'll continue to watch Hot Banana and report back as the situation ripens.

We release version 10 of The CMS Report

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 00:01:00 -0400

Our quest to tell the real story about web content management software continues today. In this latest edition of The CMS Report, we've updated all the vendor reviews and added some new evaluation criteria, including system reporting, micro-applications, and content retention -- addressing the increasingly important role of marketers and records managers. With this version, we also make available an optional "European Edition," which adds several new vendors active primarily in that region (Escenic, e-Spirit, eZ publish, GOSS, Immediacy, and Terminalfour). In North America, we begin coverage of Hot Banana and Hannon Hill.

As always, CMS Report buyers within the past 10 weeks will receive the new version gratis. Previous CMS Watch customers are eligible for discounted updates. Look for an e-mail shortly.