Tibco Acquires Spotfire For $195 Million

Tibco Software moved to bolster its enterprise software offerings by acquiring Spotfire, a startup specializing in advanced business-intelligence software.

In the Tuesday announcement, Tibco said it will pay $195 million in cash for Spotfire. The deal is expected to close before October.

Tibco said Spotfire's predictive analytics software will fit neatly into its service-oriented architecture and business-process management offerings.

"The combination of Spotfire's next generation BI capabilities with Tibco's real-time infrastructure will successfully transform the way customers can interact with data to offer a complete and contextual picture for making truly informed decisions," said Tibco chairman and CEO Vivek Ranadive in a statement.

Noting that many large IT vendors are heavily invested in older BI architectures, the firms said Spotfire's advanced software in combination with Tibco's SOA and BPM offerings will improve the manner in which business users interact with data.

Spotfire's software, which features an interactive and visual approach to data analysis, enables users to ask and answer questions on demand. The software is designed for easy use by business managers, including those who aren't necessarily steeped in IT expertise.

"Today's front-line decision-makers want not only unparalleled access to business-critical information, but also a broader, clearer view of how that data relates to processes," said Spotfire's CEO Christopher Ahlberg, who said Spotfire's software combined with Tibco's will enable users to make quicker and better business decisions.