NewsInternational Business Machines Inc., IBM, The Weather Company, digital assets, weather forecasts, meteorological data
Oct 29, 2015 04:48 AM EDT
The International Business Machines Inc (IBM) is finalizing the acquisition of The Weather Company's digital assets.
According to Fortune the deal announced on Wednesday is more than $2 billion. It only involves the purchase of the digital properties, which includes the website, web infrastructure, date, and app. If the deal pushes through, IBM will own weather.com, Weather Underground, WSI, and the rest of the Weather Company brands, except for the Weather Channel TV network.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the deal will bring IBM closer to its goal to earn from a new wave of data-crunching software. This will bring 104-year-old IBM to a whole new level, which is consumer advertising. IBM will hire key employees from the Weather Company, including CEO David Kenny and sales chief Jeremy Steinberg. IMB will also take in 900 other employees from the Weather Company.
IBM has set its eyes on the Weather Company's "big data" platform. This runs the in-house Weather Company apps, and it serves up a bulk of data for 26 billion third-parties every day. The deal has the potential to combine the Weather Company's meteorological data and IBM's Watson artificial intelligence computer. IBM has been funnelling huge amounts of funds to Watson, which is its robotic Jeopardy champion. This will help them make up for its declining traditional businesses.
Weather Company chief executive David Kenny said, "Upon closing of this deal, the Weather Company will continue to be able to help improve the precision of weather forecasts and further deepen IBM's Watson IoT capabilities."
IBM's massive resources allow the Weather Company to shift its focus entirely to the data and technology aspects of weather without distractions from being a media company at the same time.
March this year, IBM and the Weather Company worked together to sell data crunching services. The partnership leads the Weather Company to come up with the idea of moving its weather data technology to IBM's cloud system.