Here's some from an interesting take by H. Lee Murphy on Crain's Chicago Business news site about IBM's purchase of SPSS , the software company with a large presence in Rochester.
The SPSS group in Rochester is what was the local company called Showcase before it was acquired.
Software specialist SPSS Inc. was rumored to be up for sale for so many years that the only surprise in the $922.2-million buyout of the Chicago company by IBM Corp. in October was that it took so long.
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SPSS designs predictive analytics software, which helps corporate customers analyze data and forecast behavior. Call centers, for instance, employ SPSS software to predict which customers will be likely to buy certain products. Most observers say the technology will fit neatly into the IBM business intelligence platform.
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"Business analytics is a key growth area for IBM," says Deepak Advani, IBM's vice-president of predictive analytics based in Raleigh, N.C. "We've invested more than $12 billion in acquisitions and organic growth to build this portfolio."
The deal-making hasn't come cheap. The price IBM paid for SPSS represented a 42% premium to its stock price and a rich multiple of three times annual sales of about $303 million. But IBM's overall software sales have been falling in recent quarters amid the recession while business analytics as an industry has been growing.
