You got to hand it to IBM, those guys are buying everyone. As somebody who's been following the SOA space, I was amazed at how IBM was able to consolidate most of the major SOA players, so much so that the SOA space got downright boring. I love the notion of many smaller players running around looking to out innovate each other, and the resulting interesting ideas that push the limits of the technology. Therefore, I'm looking at the acquisition of SPSS by IBM as something that is not at all positive for the world of BI. Here's why.
The BI space is emerged and normalized, and the innovation around BI in the last few years has been lacking. While there have been some movements to things like cloud computing, or the ability to leveraged unstructured data, the BI of 5 years ago looks pretty much like the BI of today. There are many reasons for this, including limitations of the market is which is relatively small, and lack of clear thought leadership around BI. However, the core reason is that fewer and fewer BI players exist, and those that do are either really really small, or really really big.
While SPSS was no startup, there are many ways to take a company like that in more innovative directions. Not sure if they had the chops to do that, but now that they are owned by IBM, we'll never know, and the technology will eventually melt into the massively complex IBM stack, never to be heard from again. The result is less innovation in the marketplace and more of a reason to ignore BI as an evolving space.
Nothing is going to stop things like this from occurring. Investors want to get an exit, and it's just a matter of business. I've purchased companies, and I've sold companies, I understand the benefits to the bank account. However, I also understand that larger companies typically don't provide the more exciting ideas, and I think that companies the size of SPSS serve a purpose in the market, and lacking their presence will hurt BI in the long run. Trust me.
Dave
Not sure I agree with your assessment in this case, at least not when it comes to SPSS predictive analytics/data mining capabilities. The innovation that is needed in predictive analytics is about making it more pervasive and more integrated into the way systems work. This means tying it more closely to event processing, business processes, business rules - probably through what I call Decision Management. While some standards are making an impact here (PMML for instance), I think putting data mining/predictive analytics and business rules/optimization together as IBM has now done is more likely to spur innovation than not.
I guess it depends what kind of innovation you are looking for.
JT
CEO, Decision Management Solutions
ebizQ blog on Decision Management
SPSS clearly lacked the marketing prowess to get to the next level -- second rate indeed -- and they had an appallingly bad staff turnover rate as well -- so they had no other choice but to allow themselves to be subsumed into a much larger business.
Well the world of BI may be getting boring, the semantic universe is just begining. Small global companies like Attensity are leading the charge.
SPSS has the most horrible customer service EVER. It was bad before IBM, promises were made about improvements.... AND it got WORSE!
SPSS is doomed, customer service is hell if not absent. Ordered and payed for software 3 months ago...still no software. One excuse after another with never an answer except, Oh it should be there soon.
SPSS (and IBM) SUCK HARD!