Off the shelf, DIY, or assisted analytics?
Keen IO announced new funding yesterday, securing $2.35 million to extend their "API for custom analytics" offering.
Keen's proposition is that off-the-shelf analytics services like Google Analytics rarely give a company all the insights they require. Building a bespoke solution, on the other hand, is complex and usually cost-prohibitive. Enter Keen, with a set of services intended to make it reasonably straightforward to identify, process and act upon data.
The core idea is an interesting one, but it faces a set of obvious challenges. Keen's API will need (presumably?) to extend to encompass the functions their customers demand... otherwise they're just a slightly less off-the-shelf off-the-shelf solution, no?
There's a clear place for simple take it or leave it analytics offerings. They fulfil a role, despite their limitations. There's also a clear place for the complexity, power, customisability and flexibility of a completely bespoke analytics deployment, despite the cost and complexity.
Then there's a space in the middle which Keen (and others) are trying to occupy. It's a potentially lucrative space, but it's also a hard one to operate in. Expectations, skill levels, and understanding will vary widely here. You're marketing to everyone from the user of Google Analytics who wants a slightly different graph, right through to the trained data scientist who's looking to take a short cut for a specific project.
Keen IO doesn't seem quite sure which end of this market segment it really wants to target. The home page has code snippets... and prominent links to a paid consultancy service.
Either end of the market's middle offers Keen a viable business opportunity. Seeking to address both ends of the middle (and the middle of the middle)?
That may just prove too hard.