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TheDomains.com

IBM is Buying Weather.com

October 28, 2015 by Michael Berkens

According to USAToday.com, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM)  has agreed to acquire the Weather Company’s data and digital properties which would include Weather.com

Financial terms weren’t disclosed. But the deal is valued at more than $2 billion

It doesn’t include Weather’s primary TV asset, the Weather Channel.

“In 2008, the Weather Co. was bought by an investor group — led by Comcast’s NBCUniversal and the private equity firms Bain Capital and the Blackstone Group — for about $3.5 billion. But reports have surfaced in recent months that the Atlanta-based company was looking to unload its digital business to focus on TV assets.”

As the two companies began to work together, IBM’s acquisition just made sense. “When we started to go down the partnership path … (the companies discovered) synergistic new solutions that would be not only digitally disruptive but transformative from a business performance standpoint,” said Inhi Suh, Vice President, Strategy & Business Development, Analytics, IBM.

For example, power companies and other utilities need not only hourly and daily outage predictions along with up-to-the-minute reports but also long-term forecasts into the next month or so, she said. “Being able to use all of the advanced weather science that the Weather Company has developed and you marry that with IBM’s deep industry expertise in utilities and distribution and we can now do things like pre-storm logistics, (predict the need for) first responders in emergency situations and predict load forecasts for business,” Suh said.

The impact of weather on U.S. business amounts to about $500 billion annually, Clayton said. “Weather affects retail behavior, energy consumption, supply chain, transportation, government, financial markets, almost everything,” he said. “So the impact on business is tremendous.”

The Weather Channel will continue to be owned by the Weather Co.’s original owners, a consortium comprising the private equity firms The Blackstone Group and Bain Capital, and NBCUniversal.

IBM said it also plans to further develop the Weather Co.’s digital advertising skills for more ad-sponsored content and applications.

The acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of 2016.

Filed Under: Domain Industry, Domain Names, Domains Tagged With: IBM. Weather.com, Weather

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

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Comments

  1. SoFreeDomains says

    October 28, 2015 at 3:31 pm

    IBM is trying to be like Google – trying to have its teeth on every icing of the cake.

  2. M. Menius says

    October 28, 2015 at 5:56 pm

    Seems like an odd acquisition for IBM. Maybe they are trying to diversify like Google, develop new lines of business to move beyond the old paradigm. Weather.com is a strong brand for sure.

  3. h4ck3r says

    October 29, 2015 at 11:36 am

    I thought weather.com was just a data aggregator anyway. They get their records from National Climatic Data Center and Naval Observatory.

    Seems a strange data acquisition really but I guess now Watson will tell me it rained this day 3 years ago last Tuesday in Boca Raton between 10 am and 11 am.


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