Apple, Microsoft, IBM: 7 Big Analytics Buys You Need to Know
Apple, IBM and Microsoft have all made multiple acquisitions of analytics startups in the last year. Here's an overview of who they bought and why it matters to IT.
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Apple, IBM, and Microsoft have all made multiple acquisitions in the analytics area in 2015. While big data may appear to have lost its luster to some -- for instance, the term "big data" was conspicuously absent from Gartner's Hype Cycle this year -- it's really just moved onto a new stage.
Now the attention has shifted from investments in infrastructure technologies to getting value out of all that data. That means there's a bigger focus on analytics. That's why these three big technology companies are snapping up analytics startups, and even later-stage companies. In 2015 alone we count several deals from these three big vendors.
The deals mean that IT organizations can expect a richer set of systems, applications, and tools from these vendors. Those enhancements run the gamut, depending on the deal and the vendor. But the goal is the same -- to advance analytics for IT.
[Looking for more on Microsoft's analytics strategy? Read Microsoft's Revolution Analytics Deal Is Finalized.]
While Apple doesn't ever comment on how it will use companies that it buys, the analytics acquisitions it announced this year are a neat fit for bringing more value to platforms, including the iPhone, iOS, and iTunes, which have become standard for many IT organizations.
IBM's deals all center on building out the richness of its existing Watson cognitive computing platform. The acquisitions include domain expertise with healthcare data and analytics, and the ability to create APIs to expand the universe of developers for the platform.
Microsoft's acquisition announcements around analytics in 2015 are more scattered along functional lines, but the company announced more deals than Apple or IBM this year. The company acquired a key open source statistical modeling program implementation with a huge community of developers, an HR behavioral analytics platform, a mobile data visualization development tool provider, and an eDiscovery text analysis tool.
Each of these analytics tools and platforms were important enough to have captured the attention of the world's largest technology companies. Here's a closer look at the deals.
Date: September 2015
What it is: Mapsense is a developer of location-based visualization and analytics, with software that provides geographic representations of data.
Why it matters: While Apple doesn't comment on how it will use the companies it acquires, it's expected that Mapsense will enhance maps and navigation on the iPhone. The enhancement will be particularly useful to your workers in the field. It could also be used to create visual data representations of geographic information, such as heat maps.
Date: January 2015
What it is: Semetric is the creator of the Musicmetric platform, which tracks and analyzes sentiment around popular music and musicians on social media.
Why it matters: OK, we admit this has nothing directly to do with your day job in IT. But, analytics plus music: What's not to love about that? Apple is likely to leverage the analytics in this tool to enhance its iTunes music marketplace, and to serve up a dashboard that music labels and recording artists can use to track sales and other metrics. The dashboard will provide data-as-a-service to those who use its market. Some industry watchers believe the deal could be part of Apple's plan to relaunch its Spotify rival, Beats Music.
Date: April 2015
What it is: IBM describes Explorys as a healthcare intelligence cloud company that has built one of the largest clinical data sets in the world, representing more than 50 million lives.
Why it matters: IBM has targeted Watson, its cognitive computing big data platform, at vertical industries, and one of those is healthcare. By acquiring such a large clinical data set, IBM is poised to provide even more value to Watson's healthcare clients.
Date: April 2015
What it is: IBM describes Phytel as a provider of physician-led population health management software that enables providers to meet healthcare quality requirements and reimbursement models by delivering care based on evidence of what works best.
Why it matters: IBM is again adding another tool to its healthcare vertical toolkit for analytics. For healthcare-related companies that are customers of IBM, this addition could prove valuable.
Date: March 2015
What it is: IBM says AlchemyAPI provides an application programming interface (API) for cognitive computing systems. IBM says it plans to integrate AlchemyAPI's deep learning technology into the core of its Watson platform.
Why it matters: This deal broadens the developer universe for IBM, bringing AlchemyAPI's community to the party. It could enable more companies to integrate applications into IBM's Watson, thus broadening the platform's accessibility.
Date: September 2015
What it is: VoloMetrix is a venture-funded startup based in Seattle whose mission it is to correlate employee behavior with business outcomes. They call it "People Analytics."
Why it matters: Microsoft plans to combine VoloMetrix's experience and technology with the analytics Microsoft already gathers on customer use of Office 365. The goal is to help users become more efficient by providing answers to questions such as, "How can I improve my email messages to ensure my communication is more effective?"
Date: April 2015
What it is: DataZen is a mobile business intelligence and data visualization company. Its offerings are designed to allow businesses to create mobile dashboards on which they can view Excel and database information.
What it means: Microsoft says this deal will bring its Power BI strategy to smartphones and tablets, including mobile Windows and Android devices. The goal is to enable users to access analytics and data from anywhere on any device.
Date: January 2015
What it is: Equivio offers a text analytics service for legal and compliance markets that uses machine learning to identify relevant documents.
Why it matters: Microsoft's goal on this deal is simple -- to help its customers tackle the legal and compliance challenges inherent in managing large quantities of documents and email.
Date: January 2015
What it is: Equivio offers a text analytics service for legal and compliance markets that uses machine learning to identify relevant documents.
Why it matters: Microsoft's goal on this deal is simple -- to help its customers tackle the legal and compliance challenges inherent in managing large quantities of documents and email.
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