Dell Buys Way into Predictive Analytics by Acquiring StatSoft

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Dell yet again signaled its intentions to compete more aggressively in the analytics space with the acquisition today of StatSoft.

With 1,500 customers, StatSoft is the second major analytics acquisition that Dell has made since acquiring Quest Software. In 2012, just prior to being acquired by Dell, Quest Software acquired Kitenga, a provider of high-end analytics software that usually gets applied to Big Data problems.

In contrast, John Whittaker, director of product marketing for Dell Information Management, says StatSoft represents a more mainstream play into the realm of predictive analytics. As there is definitely a blurring of the line these days between analytics applications, Whittaker says customers should expect to see Dell Software being significantly more aggressive in terms of delivering analytics capabilities into the midmarket.

Whittaker says whether those capabilities are delivered in premise, as a service or embedded within another application will depend on the use case involved. But Dell is clearly signaling its intention to be a disruptive force in terms of making analytics more accessible, says Whittaker.

While how much appetite there is to apply analytics in the midmarket remains to be seen, after going private, Dell is clearly betting that this is one software category where it expects to be able to differentiate itself in a hurry.