I have unfortunately been getting emails over the last half year, stating that Yahoo! Web Analytic is getting SLOW! That of course hurts, as we have been pretty proud of the speed of which we could actually provide real-time data back to you, while operating as IndexTools. There is no excuse in this and the emails, tweets and comments around the web are all pretty much true; it is slow, sometimes slow to the extent of being impracticable!

What most people don’t know, is that all new customer accounts, especially the thousands and thousands of Yahoo! Store Customers, were setup within Yahoo! data centers and provisioned accordingly (so they are experiencing a much faster system). BUT all legacy IndexTools partners and clients were left in our Budapest data centers and we have not really increased capacity since the acquisition in May 2008. However; partners and direct clients have kept adding accounts every single day since then, which of course isn’t really fair to anybody, as the system only gets slower and slower.

I am therefore really happy to say that we are finally ready to migrate all legacy clients and partners to Yahoo! Data Centers and thus making the final step away from our previous infrastructure.

This is a process that starts over the next few weeks and will be executed during the coming months. You will not only be moved to faster data centers, but even more exciting, you will soon get the opportunity to use the updated version 5 of the tracking code. A tracking code which all NEW accounts use. IndexTools legacy clients are on Version 4.

A shameless self promotion, and only because I spent 5 months on it;  is a note of me actually describing both Version 4 and Version 5 in my upcoming (April 2009) Yahoo! Web Analytics book. Making the transition from one to the other for our lovable IndexTools clients a whole lot easier.

Here’s an example that explains the constraints as well as the freedom of the PENDING_SALE action value and shows the difference between version 4 and version 5 of the code:

Version 4
var ACTION=’PENDING_SALE’;
var _S_SKU=’DM112899; DM113834’;
var _S_UNITS=’2;1’;
var _S_AMOUNTS=’100.00;50.00’;
var ORDERID=’10099803’;
var AMOUNT=‘USD150.00‘

Version 5
YWATracker.setAction(“PENDING_SALE“);
YWATracker.setSKU(“DM112899; DM113834“);
YWATracker.setUnits(“2;1“);
YWATracker.setAmounts(“100.00;50.00“);
YWATracker.setOrderId(“10099803“);
YWATracker.setAmount(“USD150.00“);

So all good NEWS! And before you comment on WHEN this will be opening up. :-) I promise to post a bit more about what our strategy is, who we will be opening this up to soon, what we plan to do about consultancies and finally the upcoming version 9.5 upgrade (which is SUPER sexy from a data point of view).

Stay tuned… and my apologies for the fact that this and the next coming posts will be focused on Yahoo! Web Analytics. I promise to state this in the title so you can easily skip it, if this is not for you.

Find the original message which we sent out yesterday below.

Cheers
dennis

We hope this e-mail finds you well. In our effort to keep you informed we wanted to touch base with you as we get ready to take the last big step in our successful integration with Yahoo!

As we informed you towards the end of last year, we will be bringing our new European (located in Switzerland) data center online in Q1/Q2 2009. We plan to move all existing Y! Web Analytics clients (formerly IndexTools clients) from the Budapest located data center and this process will be taking place over the next few months.

This move will involve a number of significant changes and will require some action on your side.

The following points are a high level overview of what you can expect to occur in the coming months:

• The migration process will commence at the beginning of March and will involve two phases. In the first phase we will be migrating all customer accounts to the new data center – this process is expected to be completed by the middle of April, 2009 at which point you’ll be able to access your migrated account (located in the new data center). During phase two, you will be required to make some changes on your site/client’s sites to take full advantage of the new system – this phase is scheduled to be completed by the middle of June, 2009.
• During the migration process support will continue to be provided as normal and our primary support channel will remain as support(@)indextools.com. Business critical issues will be addressed as a matter of priority and all other issues will be responded to within 72 hours. However, bug fixes will be released to the new data center only and these will become available to existing customers when the new data center is up and running and migration of all accounts has been completed.
• It should be noted that we will have to suspend the provisioning of new accounts and projects to ensure that synchronization of the two data centers can be performed correctly. Once the synchronization has been completed we will provide further information on account & project provisioning.

We appreciate you will have further questions regarding this. Please can we ask for your patience while we complete a comprehensive guide which will provide you with detailed information on what will be happening, when it will happen and what action you will need to take. This communication will be sent to you towards the middle of March when the migration process gets under way.

There is no action for you to take at this time. We will ensure that you have all required information within the coming weeks and that you have ample time to take the necessary course of action.

We would like to thank you again for your cooperation and look forward to continuing to serve your web analytics requirements through our new and improved data centers!

Sincerely,
Your Partners at Yahoo! Web Analytics