IBM is acquiring The Weather Company’s product and technology businesses to enhance its cloud ecosystem.
The deal, which is said to be worth about $2bn, includes The Weather Company’s B2B, mobile and cloud-based web properties, as well as WSI, weather.com, Weather Underground and The Weather Company brand.
Cable television business The Weather Channel is not part of the deal, but it will be allowed to use the analytics and forecasts data under a license contract.
IBM said the planned purchase adds to the $3bn investment it committed earlier this year to build products and services in the Internet of Things (IoT).
The acquisition will bring together IBM’s cognitive and analytics platform and The Weather Company’s cloud data platform, which handles 26 billion requests per day.
The combination will serve as the foundation for the new Watson unit and Watson IoT Cloud platform, IBM said.
The deal will enable IBM to collect various worldwide data sets, store, analyse and distribute them across the Watson platform.
IBM Solutions Portfolio and Research senior vice-president John Kelly said: "The Weather Company’s extremely high-volume data platform, coupled with IBM’s global cloud and the advanced cognitive computing capabilities of Watson, will be unsurpassed in the Internet of Things, providing our clients significant competitive advantage as they link their business and sensor data with weather and other pertinent information in real time."
Earlier this year, The Weather Company and IBM formed an alliance to integrate real-time weather insights into business for enhancing operational performance and decision-making.
