Migration frustration – SiteCatalyst 15
telleston | April 15, 2011Ok, so I admit it, I’m a massive (borderline obsessive) brand advocate for Omniture (now the Adobe Omniture Business Unit), and I’m definitely not alone, but we’ve been dealt a harsh card.
The card? The migration to SiteCatalyst v15. We’ve been told we can’t migrate for probably up to a year. In my opinion, quite frankly, Omniture that just sucks!
Many of us sit on the Customer Advisory Board for Omniture, where we talk about the product and roadmap and features and upgrades that we’re looking for.
Many of us were involved, at least over the last 6 months, beta testing SiteCatalyst v15 – quite frankly because we all tend to be power users, have multiple products and really push the envelope to what the product can achieve. And during the beta test we helped Omniture “real world” test the product in readiness for launch. And what an incredible new version it is. Segmentation on the fly, full subrelations by default, more accurate visitor counts, a whole new architecture, better UI and usability…the list just goes on and on.
And now we’re told we can’t migrate because we’re either too big, too complex, or have to many integrated products (all Omniture products) and as that complicates things, the migration simply isn’t possible.
Part of the customer benefit to sitting on CABs and participating in Beta tests, which is very time consuming, is the promise of early adoption to the new product when it becomes available.
Omniture has some serious brands relying on their products for insight and optimisation…these are high net worth clients to Omniture, and yet, these are now the same clients that cannot migrate and cannot leverage the new capabilities, which we’ve all been loyally waiting for.
New clients can go straight onto the platform…but they’re not yet the brand advocates. They’re not the ones paying the big bucks for insight. They’re not the ones who have brand loyalty yet. They’re not the ones who have stuck with Omniture for years. We, the bigger clients, are. And yet, we, the ones who have invested a huge amount of time, effort, resources and money into the platform cannot get value from the new release, for at least 6-12 months, and in some cases, projected 18 months.
That makes no sense!
In Murdoch’s case, it’s because we use SearchCenter+. In other cases, it’s if you use DataSources (a key advanced feature), Video measurement is another…in fact there’s a bit of a list involved that “qualifies customers to migrate”.
Now, I know, through participating in the beta and sitting on the CABs, that this release has a very complicated and new backend, but IMHO you’ve failed to looked after your number #1 clients…the clients who are pushing the boundaries, or who invest a lot with you. They’re the ones who have been taken in to the candy store and told they can’t buy – having helped you set up the candy store in the first place!
Despite all of this, I’m still a massive brand advocate. I think Omniture does an amazing job and has amazing products…but I really think the priority for this launch is all wrong!
Are you frustrated with this too…tell me what you think?
Related Posts
- Time spent by Traffic Source
- Flowplayer and SiteCatalyst v15
- Success Event Pathing
- Brightcove Video in SiteCatalyst 15
- What are our members doing?
- Hello 15!
- Elusive engagement – Part II – Visitor scoring
- Deeper internal search insights that’ll help with content needs
- Moving beyond business-based segmentation
- New products announced at Adobe Omniture Summit 2011
Totally with you there. As the largest Asia Pacific customer we’re going to be about last to migrate, it seems. Think this could’ve been better handled, though I totally understand the _enormous_ changes in the back-end which will see the pipeline of improvements made a whole lot easier. But yeah, it’s a bad look to penalise your biggest and most enthusiastic customers.
One thing they could do right away is to give power users like us a free account for our personal use, to allow us to experiment with SC15 at least. It’s actually something I’ve been meaning to suggest on Ideas anyway, so we’ve got somewhere we can try wild ideas without the corporate overhead of getting things approved, rigorously tested etc etc.
I feel your pain. On the CAB and bet here as well. I’m lucky in that I don’t seem to have a ton of clients that use SearchCenter, DataSources or have a ton of video. Basically if you’re a large media company, you’re going to be waiting a LONG time. That all being said, even though I have a ton of clients that do not have these restrictions, absolutely none of them have yet to be migrated to SiteCatalyst 15. Although I expect a few to happen very soon.So, still just waiting here.
I think that this problem will truly manifest itself as the CAB and beta programs move forward if there continue to be members that can no longer contribute in practice because they are stuck on SiteCatalyst 14 while others have been migrated to 15. Another interesting thing will be to see how next year’s Summit works if a significant number of attendees are still on SiteCatalyst 14 while the Summit continues to move forward, being focused on SiteCatalyst 15 features and newer technology.
Tim,
Thank you for your comments here. We understand and certainly appreciate the excitement around SIteCatalyst 15 and the desire to upgrade immediately, or as soon as possible. I hope we’ve made it clear between CAB meetings, beta phone calls, and other communications that we want to facilitate this request. There are a variety of reasons why our customers are upgrading to SiteCatalyst 15 over a period of time; I’m not sure whether you’ve seen Bret Gundersen’s recent blog post on the upgrade process, located at http://blogs.omniture.com/2011/04/12/15-for-15-how-to-upgrade, but it discusses this process and the reasons behind it.
You make a good point about rewarding customers who have been involved with SiteCatalyst for a number of years. In working with CAB members and beta testers, we found that, in fact, many of these longer-term users needed more time to prepare their organizations — sometimes hundreds of users — for this upgrade. Internal trainings are part of that, but there are other recommended steps that your Account Manager will discuss with you. To be clear, everyone will have the opportunity to upgrade; we need to ensure that this happens at the right time for each organization. We want to help you get there as soon as humanly possible.
To your point about SearchCenter+, be aware that our recommendation relative to upgrading if you are using that product is extremely temporary and your Account Manager should be aware of this fact. At this point, I would not consider SearchCenter+ usage a long-term barrier to upgrade. You can begin to prepare now and choose an upgrade date in the relatively near future, even if you are using SearchCenter+.
I apologize if this process hasn’t been explained clearly enough, or if it appears that we are giving you or other long-term SiteCatalyst users the shaft. That certainly isn’t the intent, and in fact we believe that the upgrade partnership between you and your team on the Adobe side will produce the best possible experience for the largest number of users. We continue to appreciate your input and your passion for analytics and the Adobe Online Marketing Suite. You know where to find me if you’d like to discuss this more offline.
Thanks,
Ben Gaines
Product Manager
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Thanks Jason, appreciate your comment. Absolutely agree with you about CAB and Summit next year. You might want to read Ben’s response too.
Thanks Simon, appreciate your comment. Ben has commented as well, so you might want to check that out.
Ben, appreciate the swift response, but I do agree with Simon and Jason, especially the part about CABs and Summit next year.
I know it’s a huge change for all, and certainly there are lots of reasons for many companies not to choose to migrate yet – but I think that should be their choice, not an imposed restriction on them.
Thanks for coming back so quickly though.
Tim
See, that’s why I’m also a brand advocate. Just had a lengthy but good DM’img session with Ben on Twitter (lengthy coz its 140 characters), and a) they’re looking at ways to help/speed up our migration and b) looking at things to do with SearchCenter+, possibly de-coupling it from SiteCat for us. More to come I’m sure, so I’ll update when I get it.
Essentially, my point was that we’ve prepared for the migration, we’re ready to go from an Organisational standpoint, we worked with our AM, been through the migration docs as linked to (and more), but didn’t meet the criteria, despite having spent the last 6+ months beta testing our data, on multiple report suites, in SC15…we know that bit all works. So, if we can de-couple SearchCenter+ from within our SiteCatalyst data (i.e. don’t send the data into SiteCat, just use SearchCenter for reporting on it – not ideal, but it gets us into SC15), then thats something that we’d happily look at.
So, need to have another DM session with Cameron (product manager of SearchCenter+)…Cam you around?
So it’s close to a year after this was first posted now, have any of you migrated to v15? We here at msnbc are still waiting. Any tips on the migration from anyone who has done it? We don’t use SerachCenter+.
Hi Tiffany, apologies for the delay. Yes, Murdoch migrated and so have a number of our other clients too. The actual migration is a simple one, providing that you don’t use Video. If you do, then you’ll need to upgrade your video code to support v15. There’s also a number of reports that are no longer supported in v15 – check the upgrade docs to find out if you use them (they’re some of the less frequently used reports). Visitor counts do change, but at this point, the change has not been significantly noticed – handled through comms to the business.
Earlier last year the SearchCenter integration was the issue, but that’s been fully resolved now as far as I know, so, barring a volume challenge, I would have thought you’d be able to get onto the upgrade list. Have you talked to your account manager to find out when you’re scheduled?