IBM made an offer for SPSS this summer, we didn't cover it here in the asymptotix blogs although we joined in the inevitably brief twitter-fest at the time!
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/27936.wss Everything in the twitter-sphere is by defintion illusory, transitory & "over in a flash" (I will avoid any obvious humor!) and we had a weird July and an even stranger August here at asymptotix anyway (as I gather most of you did)! The deal hasn't closed yet but I thought I would return to it since it was largely credited as a trigger for the SAP consideration of a deal with TIBCO and the on-consequent of TIBCO's acquisition of (the vey wonderful) Data Synapse! I have been twittering about all of this of course but we haven't discussed this in the blogs, although we do reflect some detailed consideration of the initial SAP/TIBCO tie-up here: http://www.asymptotix.eu/content/germanys-sap-considering-offer-tibco-report In the comment to that post I ruminate that in acquiring SPSS, IBM are going to do to SPSS what TIBCO did to Insightful when it acquired them, i.e. TIBCO integrated the Predictive Analytic power of S+ with the Data Visualization functionality of Spotfire, any idea way ahead of its time, then. Ironically this rumination was the result of a "shooting the breeze" with a senior IBM Executive in the UK (you know who you are!) But the idea of making a sum of parts greater than a whole by leveraging intellectual capital is surely the classic merger and acquisition logic, given, particularly what TIBCO paid for IFUL at the time.

I am a huge fan of a Social Networking site for Predictive Analytic Geeks (I mean Professionals) called Analytic Bridge and I just noticed a full discussion of the consequences of the IBM/SPSS tie up there, it is here: http://www.analyticbridge.com/forum/topics/what-does-ibms-acquisition-of I particularly like the idea (from that discussion) that the SPSS acquisition will change the IBM offering strapline from "Information on Demand" to "Intelligent Information Demand"!! Although if you were to follow a hash-tag in twitter like #SPSS - you would not see much "intelligence" there! But I think the real logic for the IBM / SPSS tie up is to do what TIBCO did with IFUL and SPOTFIRE, to copy that model. SPSS is old fashioned very limited product, with a long history of which I will not bore you BUT if IBM can do what it says is the purpose of the acquisition and effectively refresh SPSS then it could be on a winner, it has taken IBM an awful long time in my view to realise that a sexy dashboard which is a rear view mirror is about as much use as a "chocolate fireguard" in these recessionary and highly supervised times (as it has SAP of course!) Here is some of the IBM blurb (I mean rubric); "Following the close of the acquisition, IBM intends to integrate SPSS within IBM's Information Management software portfolio and into the many industry offerings already available. Predictive analytics will also be an essential component of the smarter business systems that IBM is helping companies and organizations build to help confront the complex challenges presented by the exponential growth of data."

IBM has a plethora of data mining and Predictive Analytic toolsets in its BAO stable now, ILOG BRMS, OmniFind, etc etc all to be offered alongside the InfoSphere Product/Concept, call it what it what you like BUT AS IBM state; SPSS will become part of the Information Management division within the Software Group business unit, thus the real opportunity for IBM to traction the SPSS acquisition (in the Banking and Insurance Supervision space, which is my focus) is to integrate the SPSS products with InfoSphere platform and do what it says it is going to do with the IBM Smart Analytics strategy; i.e. IBM said it will release by year's end technology it calls an Analytics Optimizer, which combines hardware and software to perform even faster analytic queries. At asymptotix we are huge fans of the IBM data management product sets & our key experience lies in the Industry Models (particularly Banking and Capital Markets) and we recommend these key references if you want to grasp why we have this focus;-

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/industry-models/

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/db2luw/v9r5/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.dwe.cubeserv.doc/topics/c_cubingconcepts.html

but we are experts in Predictive Analytics and I think enhancing the integration of data management and predictive analytic toolsets is in general a good idea.

The IBM IOD conference in Las Vegas at the end of next month should produce some more interesting announcements about IBM's strategy here and what the roadmap is for all of its BI / Analytics products and services, really is.

SOME OTHER INTERESTING LINKS ON THIS STORY

http://www.intelligententerprise.com/blog/archives/2009/07/spss_is_not_the.html;jsessionid=51JTEJL3TS5SFQE1GHOSKHWATMY32JVN

http://jtonedm.com/2009/08/25/ibm-spss-and-a-sea-change-in-decision-management/

 http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2009/07/29/ibm-snags-spss-may-be-bad-timing/

http://timoelliott.com/blog/2009/08/ibm-acquires-spss-%E2%80%93-a-big-deal-or-not.html