Whos, whats and wheres of the Web: New tools give ISPs new value-added services for corporate customers

Call records are one of the most important assets carriers have for marketing, network planning and customer care, and systems that analyze, refine and unify this data are becoming essential parts of most telecom providers' arsenals.

But the same has not been true for Internet service providers, despite the fact that hits to World Wide Web sites generate records with useful data on who uses them and how they're used.

Now, almost two years after the emergence of the first tools to analyze the use of corporate Web sites, a new generation of Web analysis tools is giving Web site creators the ability to know their audiences better and providing ISPs with a new value-added service.

And, more importantly, ISPs finally want them.

"A year ago you could hardly give Web analysis software away," said Steve Shank, vice president of marketing for San Jose-based developer Aquas Inc. "This year, however, there are an estimated 2 million Web sites--with 100,000 new sites a month--and 60% of them are hosted by a third party. Now there's a real need to verify levels of service and put the rest of the accumulated data to good use."

Last week, Aquas introduced Bazaar Analyzer Pro/vider, a Java-based, real-time interactive Web site analysis tool designed to help ISPs' bottom lines in two ways. First, sophisticated Web analysis can provide an additional source of revenue to the service provider. Second, BA Pro/vider can help to significantly reduce the annual administration cost of Web analysis.

"With a little 'Sherlock Holmes,' you can find out a lot of cool stuff about how a site has been used," said Shank. "You can determine exactly how many people have been steered to the site as a result of a banner ad, or whether a prospective customer has taken a look at a white paper on your site. That sort of analysis is a true added value for an ISP's corporate customers."

The Pro/vider also gives ISPs the ability to bill for different levels of analysis, enabling them to immediately install a tiered pricing structure. Better yet, the more involved in analysis a customer wishes to be, the less effort the ISP needs to devote to administering the analysis, said Shank.

While Aquas' tool examines the key marketing data created by Web site use, other tools focus on the network's performance. Accrue Insight, another Java-based tool, tracks site activity in real time and reports each visitor's experience in detailed session profiles.

These profiles include information on time spent per page (after the download is complete), frequency and location of resets at a site, and both server and round-trip network response time for requests.

"Insight's a little different in that you can view both halves of the round trip," said Theresa Marcroft, director of marketing at the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Accrue. "The server provides just the first half of the data's trip, so if your analysis tools run on the server, you can't be assured that people get what the server sent."

Insight uses an embedded data collector in the Internet protocol switch processor to monitor traffic and provide a complete view of how sites are being used.

The tool provides a value-added service for ISPs in that it allows customers to "double-check the ISP's performance," Marcroft said. "It can verify the performance of the ISP's network, and it can point out server bottlenecks that are the customer's responsibility."

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