The Deal
IBM has announced their intent to acquire SPSS for about $1.2B or $50 a share.  Seems like a nice premium for SPSS stockholder's at around a 42% over the previous close.  But I will leave the financial analysis of the deal to the investment community.

The Impact
I like the deal for the overall business intelligence and performance management market.  Predictive analytics has been talked about by analysts of the BI and PM market for years without much traction outside of the statistical analysis vendors (SPSS and SAS).  IBM is the first vendor to really put some significant skin in the game by making a major acquisition of a predictive analytics vendor.  Will this acquisition finally bring predictive analytics into the main stream of the BI and PM world?  Not instantly but having the heft and resources of IBM behind it certainly will add significant market exposure, implementation resources, and a huge target market (the IBM base) that has hindered the adoption of predictive analytics in the BI and PM community.

The Competition
What will SAP and Oracle do in response?  Will SAS be in their sights now that IBM has grabbed SPSS?  I think it would take a pretty penny to convince Dr. Goodnight that it is time to relinquish his monarchy but given the right offer and the right timing who knows?

The Family
IBM Cognos and SPSS have been partners for over a year so we may see a smooth transition of SPSS into the IBM Information Management family even though that division has added more siblings than Jon & Kate Plus 8 in recent years (FileNet, Data Mirror, Princeton Softech, Cognos, Applix, Solid, Exeros, SPSS)



The Promise
In a recent comment  to a previous blog entry I wrote that it is better to predict and prepare than to experience and react.  This is the promise of bringing predictive analytics to the masses.  It is my hope IBM and other vendors will be successful in delivering on this promise.