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Analysis: Analytics weakling IBM pumps up with SPSS buy

Did SAP and Oracle miss a smart opportunity?

ComputerWorld, By Eric Lai, July 28, 2009

Computerworld - IBM's $1.2 billion purchase of SPSS Corp. today will immediately turn IBM from pretender into contender in the high-end analytics and data mining market, say analysts, and could leave rivals such as SAP AG or Oracle Corp. ruing a missed opportunity.

It continues IBM's recent tradition of bolstering its Information On Demand lineup with massive purchases. IBM bought Cognos Inc. in late 2007 for $5 billion, allowing it to leap from fifth to third place in the overall $22 billion business analytics software market, according to a 2008 report from IDC Corp.

IBM's purchase of SPSS will have an even more dramatic effect. According to IDC, IBM had less than one-half a percent of the $1.5 billion global market in 2008 for advanced analytic tools -- a small, but key, segment of the overall business analytics market.

"IBM would probably be the first to admit that it took its focus off the predictive analytics/data mining market over the past several years," Forrester Research analyst James Kobielus wrote in a blog today. He said IBM "buried" its Intelligent Miner data-mining tools.

Buying SPSS, which had 14% of the predictive analytics/data mining market segment, will allow IBM to leap from 13th into second place, behind only SAS Institute Inc. SAS dominates the segment with a 33% market share.

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See also IBM buys SPSS in move to bolster analytics portfolio