Comments on: IBM Buys SPSS: More Quants For a Smarter Planet

By: IBM Acquires SPSS – A Big Deal, or Not? | Business Analytics | SPSS Help

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 09:15:40 +0000

[...] James Governor, Redmonk: IBM Buys SPSS More Quants for a Smarter Planet [...]

By: Binn

Binn — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 05:22:24 +0000

The only way that IBM can realize the value of the SPSS purchase is to open source the SPSS software (such as their PASW Statistics and PASW Modeler) or release it free to the community,just like their Eclipse IDE.

By: IBM, SPSS and a sea change in decision management — JT on EDM

IBM, SPSS and a sea change in decision management — JT on EDM — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:42:51 +0000

[...] more on this consider James Governor’s post on IBM and SPSS, Forrester’s report on the acquisition, Neil Raden’s post on IBM’s vision for [...]

By: James Governor

James Governor — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 12:15:57 +0000

niraj. in what sense “wishful?” I have no skin in HP’s game, but I do believe that M&A in a market sector leads to further consolidation. there is plenty of data out there to support such a case. “several millions spend on neoview” – in this game that is very small change indeed. SAS- has shown itself to be a pretty formidable player in the space, and if the market as a whole grows, that is good for SAS. But of course I also lay out the opposite scenario – with IBM driving price pressure on SAS revenues

By: Niraj

Niraj — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:30:29 +0000

Cases of wishful and predictions based without data :

“HP acquire Teradata” – What happens to Several millions spent on Neoview

SAS Institute, must be feeling good today: Its model did not validation from IBM. SAS should rather be scared that its business is getting a new entrant IBM to take away its market share

By: abbielundberg

abbielundberg — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:14:46 +0000

more quants for a smarter planet: missed this interesting post last week from @monkchips on IBM’s purchase of SPSS http://bit.ly/jpSVA

This comment was originally posted on Twitter

By: IBM Acquires SPSS – A Big Deal, or Not? | BI Questions Blog

IBM Acquires SPSS – A Big Deal, or Not? | BI Questions Blog — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:45:15 +0000

[...] James Governor, Redmonk: IBM Buys SPSS More Quants for a Smarter Planet [...]

By: James Governor

James Governor — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:44:08 +0000

Great point Jonathan, but smarter analysis might help, no? Science doesn’t thrive on a lack of data. We need to measure outcomes and act on them. Of course decision-making will never be based on data anyway, humans are too messed up for that. But look at medicine, for example, and unnecessary but routine medical procedures- by measuring and monitoring outcomes and being truly evidence-based these can be cut out. Or oil exploration IT companies, that buy up old “discarded” data, and process it. I agree a lot of collected data has very little real business value, but the problem as ever remains knowing what to discard. In the mashup, where new uses can be found for old data, this problem is tougher than ever.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:59:58 +0000

James, more analysis on more data will not save the world. Richard Rumelt recently coined the term “smooth sailing fallacy” to remind us that you cannot manage results by simply looking at the meter.
http://alignment.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/smooth-sailing-fallacy/

This is consistent with my own viewpoint that we have descended into measurement madness using the motto “you cannot manage what you cannot measure”. Our obsession with metrics means we’ve lost sight of business outcomes. “Not everying that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts”. Perhaps organizations would be better served to focus on what they are trying to achieve than to just keep score. http://alignment.wordpress.com/2008/09/15/focused-organizations/

By: James Governor

James Governor — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:10:08 +0000

You are not wrong, Timothy. System z has no intention of going quietly into the night as a platform too expensive for data analysis. IBM has a great deal of flexibility in how it can charge for mainframe workloads, particularly new ones, particularly when its the application provider. SPSS on z – is an absolute shoe-in