One topic I heard over and over again from exhibitors at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition this week in Boston was that merchants are overwhelmed by the number of current solutions meant to enhance their Web sites and drive performance.
With this in mind, several vendors were talking up recent – or soon to be announced — alliances with other providers of related or complementary services designed to provide merchants with the convenience of one-stop shopping. In some cases, these were simple reselling agreements while in others, the software from a variety of vendors had been integrated under one brand’s umbrella platform.
In an example of the latter scenario, on-demand e-mail and marketing automation solutions provider Responsys announced fully embedded integrations within its platform for recommendation, testing and targeting solutions. Available directly from within the Responsys Interact Campaign interface will be Aggregate Knowledge, Baynot, Certona, Coremetrics, MyBuys, Omniture, Proclivity Systems, richrelevance and Strands.
Several attendees at the show suggested that such alliances might be a precursor to possible merger and acquisition deals in the future.
