IBM’s planned acquisition of data analysis software specialist SPSS for $1.2 billion in cash adds an important element to its array of applications intended to help companies run more efficiently, while depriving rival applications vendor SAP of a key partner in a market segment that IBM claims is growing by 8 percent per year.
SPSS technology is sort of the last mile of a kind of software, known as business intelligence, which is used by customers to analyze data and make more informed decisions. The poor economic environment, and prospects for a protracted and shallow recovery, is prompting customers to use sophisticated software to mine data about their customer relationships for anything that could give them a competitive advantage. Research firm IDC’s Sue Feldman told me in May that some segments of this market are growing by more than 25 percent per year.
To read more, please see IBM's Buy Stunts SAP's Intelligence on my Technology Insights blog at BNET.
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