IBM has announced two strategic moves today with the acquisitions of Ounce Labs and SPSS Inc. Terms of the former deal were not disclosed, while the latter is expected to close at approximately $1.2 billion.
Ounce Labs develops source code scanning software designed to identify system vulnerabilities throughout the software development cycle. The idea is that by integrating security analysis into the development process, vulnerabilities can be located and addressed before a product goes live. IBM will integrate Ounce Labs into its Rational family of Web security applications, likely with hopes that additional security measures will make customers feel more comfortable working with applications in the cloud.
SPSS, on the other hand, is a provider of predictive analytics software. The deal is IBM’s second acquisition in the information on demand space following Cognos Inc in 2007, and comes nearly two years after IBM announced it was working alongside SPSS to deliver analytics capabilities within IBM DB2. The move will substantially beef up IBM’s business analytics offering, and place the company in better position to compete with SAP, which currently commands 33% of the market.
With the deals IBM continues the trend of acquiring companies at an astounding pace, and given recent acquisition activity from Oracle and Intel, the enterprise acquisition market is showing signs of life. It will be interesting to see if the ailing economy has wielded its worst, or if we are merely passing through the eye of the storm.