Two weeks back, WebTrends announced version 9.0. As with all recent upgrades this version is only be released to users of WebTrends on Demand. The good news is they expect by late this quarter or early October to release version 9 for the installed version.
This approach is both good and bad for users of the software version. The bad part is obvious, we don't get our hands on this latest version which holds so much promised and should make all of our reporting that much more completed.
On the other hand, when it is released, we can be assured that it will be relatively bug free and stable.
My clients really do appreciate that reduced frequency of the minor updates, as they can concentrate on the numbers and not a parade of upgrades and batches (unlike other products). I on the other hand feel that in many instances users of the software version are being punished as they do not always get some of the improved reporting. It is one thing not to release the a, b, c of the same version, but not to release intra version releases (i.e. 8.6) makes me wonder. My best guess is that WebTrends is really trying to get all users to migrate to the on-demand version. While I don't have any issues with it and have several clients using it, for many it is simply not an option based on corporate policies and the legal stance of where data is stored.
Either way, I'm looking forward to WebTrends 9 full release.
1 comment:
Hi Alan,
Just wanted to clarify that we haven't announced a release date for Analytics 9 as On Premise software.
On premise software is an important competitive differentiator for us. Government and data sensitive clients require software. We're not going to go all SaaS as long as our clients need on premise versions of our software.
We do roll out features more frequently on our SaaS environment for two reasons:
1) It takes more work to get code ready for diverse environments, whereas On Demand is a controlled space so with fewer variables to consider it's faster to get new code up and running.
2) As you said, our clients appreciate fewer updates with more stable code. Our current release cycle is 3 On Demand updates and 1 major On Premise update yearly.
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