September 9, 2009 lived up to all the hype and proved to be quite the eventful day. Events ranged from the insane, where an alcoholic minister hijacked a plane, to the bizarre, where a baby was born at 9:09 and weighed 9 pounds 9 ounces, to the downright depressing, when Beatles fans found out that their favorite band would still not be available via iTunes. But perhaps the most important event of the day was that the IBM acquisition of SPSS cleared the antitrust review deadline.
The proposed acquisition, announced on July 28th and valued at $1.2B, now has to be approved by SPSS investors during their meeting on October 2nd. The two companies are longtime partners, and this move by IBM furthers their aim to control the business data analyzation market through the acquisitions of relevant companies. This deal with SPSS will help IBM add a more sophisticated component to their current predictive analysis solutions.
Oracle has taken note of the situation, and just a day later threw down the gauntlet. Oracle’s foray into IBM’s domain should prove to be interesting as they will now be competing in both the hardware and software space. Oracle may have thrown the proverbial first punch, but IBM, with a revenue stream which nearly quadruples that of Oracle and a pending acquisition, still has the upper hand.