SPSS Inc has bought the UK’s Integral Solutions Ltd and its highly regarded Clementine data modeling engine for $7.1m cash, as SPSS continues its transition to selling high-tag data mining solutions. ISL recorded revenues of some $3.4m over the last 12 months. SPSS, best known for its analytical applications, is gradually buying its way out of the low-priced Windows market it currently occupies on to higher ground. It says there are 12 to 18 months remaining of a complete transformation of its business model. To that end SPSS, a former mainframe software company turned desktop ISV, is heading back up the channel again. ISL is key to its plan, being the first pure data mining buy. In the last 18 months SPSS has acquired three market research companies. SPSS’ main product line, SPSS for Windows, sells at up to $2,000 per transaction, but ISL’s per seat tag is $25,000 to $50,000. ISL has been looking for a partner in the analytical marketplace for some time. SPSS will continue to offer Clementine as a standalone but is also expected to position the ISL technology as a data mining workbench that can be best utilized with SPSS tools. The two lines are already integrated to some extent following a March 1998 technology agreement. Product planning is still underway but SPSS plans to unbundle ISL’s data acquisition engine and enable it to be integrated into target databases and host the calculation engine on more powerful servers. SPSS claims there’s little or no overlap with ISL’s decision tree algorithms fitting squarely alongside its own routines and visual deployment environment. SPSS is going to add its linear and non-linear progression models to ISL’s work, promising to put the A [analysis] back into OLAP. ISL’s high-end implementation of Clementine called Chess (Clementine high efficiency scalable server) is due mid-year. SPSS says it is still working through how it will treat ISL’s big name OEMs such as NCR Corp, Platinum Technology Inc and ICL Plc. SPSS claims Meta Group numbers show it has a 30% share of the data mining market.
