Congrats to WebTrends who announced their new CEO today. Dan Stickel is no stranger to the Internet, having done executive stints at Google and AltaVista.

The press release quotes Dan: “The web analytics market is forecast for nearly 20% growth in 2008, and the growth in enterprise marketing software is even greater.” Looks like the gauntlet has been thrown — this looks like a CEO challenge to WebTrends to do better than 20% growth this year.

It’s great to see such a venerable player getting past the cloud of uncertainty. I don’t know anything about WebTrends’ plans, but given Dan’s recent past at Google, expect to see an emphasis on partners.