IBM - often referred to as ‘Big Blue’ – has acquired The Weather Company, and organization which owns part of ‘The Weather Channel’. The company, which has headquarters in Armonk, New York, USA, is a globally recognized brand with business activity that ranges from hardware to the cloud. As part of the deal The CEO of the Weather Company, David Kenny, will join IBM.
IBM is noted for ‘Watson’, what it describes as a “cognitive system enabling a new partnership between people and computers”. Watson famously appeared on the US quiz show Jeopardy, winning the show and receiving a prize of $1 million. It has been spearheading IBM’s “Big Data” activity and earlier this year IBM and The Weather Company partnered on real-time weather forecasts that were underpinned by IBM’s Big Data platform - The Weather Company’s data services were integrated with IBM’s analytics and cloud services.
In a bid to strengthen its Big Data-driven Watson services, IBM is now acquiring the bulk of The Weather Company’s cloud-based technology, which includes ‘Weather.com’ but not ‘The Weather Channel’. The Weather Channel’s television broadcasts will now, however, contain content provided by IBM. With weather driving a lot of human activity, IBM’s Big Data will use The Weather Channel’s data – which is drawn from thousands of unique sources – to establish what should be a more accurate depiction of changes in weather patterns globally. This should prove a boon for a number of industries where weather patterns impact productivity.
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