IBM announced yesterday that it's acquiring web analytics vendor Coremetrics (dang: just after we last updated our vendor map...).

Our Web Analytics vendor evaluation customers know that to some extent, this deal has both companies coming full-circle, since Coremetrics acquired some of its technology from IBM in 2006.

The bigger back-story revolves around a longtime partnership between Coremetrics and IBM to provide specialized analytics services for WebSphere Commerce Server. And indeed, Coremetrics will now become part of the WebSphere group going forward.

And therein lies the first of my concerns for Coremetrics customers. WebSphere exerts huge gravitational force within IBM, but it's also where smaller modules can easily get lost. More generally, do you think IBM wants to sell more web analytics, or more WebSphere licenses?

Also, as we argued with Adobe buying Omniture, it's not clear that IBM knows how to run a true SaaS operation, as opposed to than selling and supporting software. The particular ways that Coremetrics works will create some specific challenges for Big Blue here.

We'll keep watching...