Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

Forrester: SAP, others will make analytics acquisitions

The trend will be driven by a need for deeper insight into future events and unstructured information

IBM's recently announced plans to buy SPSS, maker of specialized analytics software, will result in a wave of further consolidation in the space, according to a new Forrester Research report.

"IBM's acquisition of SPSS marks an industry tipping point. In the advanced analytics segment, the deal is having the same impact that IBM's Cognos buy had on the BI market," Forrester said.

Advanced analytics software goes beyond the reports and dashboard capabilities of traditional BI (business intelligence) tools, helping users answer questions about future events and explore "what-if" scenarios, as well as pull together and analyze unstructured information from a variety of sources, the report said.

While Oracle, SAP and other platform companies already have some of these capabilities in their portfolios, IBM's SPSS bid has competitors scrambling for a response, according to Forrester.

In the next year, a range of top BI vendors will either merge, partner or buy up many pure-play analytics vendors, such as KXEN and Angoss, according to Forrester.

Forrester particularly singles out SAP, saying the vendor will make a deal "soon," and could even submit a competitive bid for SPSS. SAP is already planning to buy SAF AG, a German company that makes analytics software aimed at retailers and wholesalers.

An SAP spokesman declined to comment on Forrester's report.

Meanwhile, a major potential acquisition target is SAS Institute, which reported US$2.26 billion in sales last year, and has a large portfolio of data mining, predictive analytics and traditional BI tools.

It's unlikely that SAP would buy SAS because of "a huge overlap" with its own portfolio, but other potential suitors include Hewlett-Packard, EMC and Oracle, Forrester said.

Even IBM may not be done buying companies, according to Forrester. "There are still plenty of opportunities in the next generation of BI for IBM to go after, such as free-form in-memory analytics (QlikTech), end-to-end BI life-cycle management (Kalido), guided search (Endeca), and many more."

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: Cognos, Cognos, EMC, Forrester Research, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, IBM Australia, Kalido, Oracle, SAP, SAS, SAS Institute, SPSS

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Coverage
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Tags: analytics, sap
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Spear Phishing Attacks - Why they are successful and how to stop them
    There's been a rapid shift from broad, scattershot attacks to advanced target attacks that have had serious consequences for victim organisations. The increased use of spear phishing is directly related to the fact that it works, as traditional security defences simply do not stop these types of attacks. This paper provides a detailed look at how spear phishing is used within advanced attacks and the key capabilities organisations need in order to effectively combat these emerging and evolving threats.
    Learn more »
  • Cloud printing in the enterprise: liberating the mobile print experience from cables, operating systems and physical boundaries
    In recent years mobile technology has proliferated throughout the enterprise. Today, virtually no one in the workforce is bound to a desk to work, check e-mail or communicate with co-workers and customers. At the same time, we’re seeing the rise of cloud technologies, loosely defined as online resources, often provided as a service, that manage the data and software that used to run solely on PCs. This merger of mobile and cloud technologies is on its way to becoming one of most significant enablers of business productivity and innovation seen in the past decade. Read more.
    Learn more »
  • A Data Center Fabric Is Critical to a Next-Generation Unified Data Center
    The data center has gone through several major evolutionary changes over the past several decades, and each change has been defined by major shifts in computing. The shift to a virtual data center will be the single biggest transition in the history of computing. This transition will reshape all the major data center tiers: applications, storage, servers and the network. This paper examines the drivers of this transition, provides real-world case studies and includes data centre fabric best practices.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments