Keynote Buys Web Benchmarking Service

In the US, online business performance consultancy Keynote Systems has acquired the GómezPro business unit of Watchfire, strengthening its CEM (customer experience management) business and adding five former Watchfire consultants to its team.

The five include Christopher Musto, VP of Research and the person responsible for managing the analyst team since 1999. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The division will be renamed the Keynote WebExcellence business unit and will continue with GomezPro's two main branded offerings under the new names of WebExcellence Scorecards and the WebExcellence Analysis Service.

The acquisition is Keynote's thirteenth acquisition in a little over five years. In the CEM sector it has already bought Enviz in October 2002, NetRaker in April 2004 and Vividence in September 2004. The latest buy gives it access to more than fifty CEM customers including many leading technology and financial services firms.

GómezPro uses an heuristics-based approach to benchmarking Web site effectiveness, which Keynote says will complement its existing research panel Web site test approach. According to Chairman and CEO Umang Gupta, 'Adding a heuristics approach to optimizing Web site effectiveness is a very useful complement to our existing quantitative-based CEM offerings. The team of consultants joining Keynote from Watchfire GómezPro is truly the crème de la crème in the financial services sector and our customers will be the beneficiaries of their great expertise and insight.'

Watchfire says the sale will enable it to focus on its core business - software to manage enterprise online risk and Web application security testing. The two companies are working closely together on the specifics of the transfer.

Keynote Systems, which calls itself The Internet Performance Authority®, bases its service around the premise that 'Online businesses can't manage what they don't measure'. It provides benchmarking data, competitive analysis and operational metrics from the customer perspective including service levels and customer experience of Web sites, broadband services and mobile communications. Headquartered in San Mateo, California, it is online at www.keynote.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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