SpotOn Acquired by Esri - Focus on Location Analytics
Posted by Chris Ovens on Sat, Oct 22, 2011
In case you missed it this week, Esri announced the acquistion of SpotOn Systems. I wanted to share my thoughts on this news; what it means for our customers, the SpotOn team, and the Geographic BI / Location Analytics journey we've been on.
Short version of the story: this is fantastic news on all fronts. As everyone knows, I don't tend to tell short stories...
One of our great customers actually published the letter we sent them on the acquistion. For our mapping customers, this acquisition is fantastic news. The Esri investment is a signal that the leader in mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is very serious about the spatial-enablement of IBM Cognos business intelligence. To this end, there will be immediate investment in the Vantage technology. Purchasing will become easier - less moving pieces; and the technical and support depth just increased dramatically. All very imporant considerations.
To the SpotOn team, this is a tremendous validation of the solution that they developed and built, marketed and sold. And along with working with the best and the brightest in the GIS space, the team seems to be very excited about adding personnel and equipment - it seems their old GM was a bit of a "scrooge"...
I've been getting a lot of the "so what are you going to do now?" questions. For the past three years our mission has been to map-enable BI reports for IBM Cognos customers. Rather than this being a handing off of the torch, this move is a "doubling down" of the mandate. The SpotOn team will form the core of a Location Analytics group within Esri. The mutual expectation is that we will see dramatically accelerated success, with more and more IBM Cognos customers seeking to address the "missing analytic".
Let me know what yout think, or if you have any questions. I look forward to hearing from you.
co