IBM completes acquisition of Star Analytics

IBM yesterday announced that it has completed the acquisition of the software portfolio of Star Analytics, Inc, a privately-held business analytics company based in California.

Early last month, New York-based IBM had agreed to buy the software portfolio of Star Analytics in order to gain faster access and real-time insight into specialised data sources. (See: IBM to acquire Star Analytics)

IBM said that the merger would further advance its business analytics initiatives providing clients easy access to financial information stored in their applications, and thereby allowing them to make more informed decisions faster.

Star Analytics' software helps to automatically integrate essential information, reporting applications and business analytics tools across their enterprises, on premise or from cloud computing environments. The software removes typical custom coding for specialised sources that are hard to maintain, and eliminates manual processes that are cumbersome and time consuming.

"Applying analytics to a wide range of data requires organisations to democratise and speed up sharing of critical information across an enterprise," said Les Rechan, IBM general manager, Business Analytics. "Star Analytics' software advances IBM's efforts to deliver analytics that span all data sources directly into the hands of front line employees, and delivers a comprehensive approach to helping clients uncover new, untapped growth opportunities.''

Star Analytics' software, combined with IBM's R&D and prior acquisitions in business analytics including Varicent, Algorithmics, Clarity Systems, OpenPages and Cognos, and recent investments in predictive analytics such as SPSS, will provide clients with a broad range of business analytics solutions. These acquisitions are part of IBM's larger focus on analytics, which spans hardware, software, services and research.

The news supports IBM's long-term growth strategy to expand the company's business analytics and optimisation software and services capabilities, an area of IBM's business that is expected to reach $20 billion in revenue by 2015.

IBM has established one of the world's deepest portfolios of analytics and big data technologies and industry expertise, including almost 9,000 dedicated business analytics and optimisation consultants, and 400 researchers.

Nearly 500 of the patents from IBM's record-breaking 20th year of innovation will serve as the building blocks for future analytics innovations that can help businesses and governments unlock the power of big data.

With the closing of this acquisition, it is expected that all Star Analytics employees will join IBM's Software Group.