Dell buys data-viz company StatSoft to sweeten its business offering

Since it went private last year, Dell has been reorienting itself toward business needs. Today, it added a new toolset for data visualization and big data analytics: advanced analytics provider StatSoft, which joins Dell via an acquisition deal of an undisclosed amount.

StatSoft, founded in 1984, offers cloud-based, on-premises, or software-as-a-service capabilities for data mining, predictive analytics and data visualization used in trend forecasting, identification of sales leads, “what-if” forecasting, and fraud detection. The company points to its successes in agile manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, risk management, fraud detection, and research.

Its Statistica line of products will now be packaged with Dell’s x86 servers. The third-largest computer maker, Dell currently offers such data management and database tools as Toad for Oracle, Toad for SQL Server, Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise, and data/application integration tools like SharePlex and Dell Boomi.

“Advanced analytics and the statistical algorithms that enable them are more important than ever before,” Dell Software information management group VP/GM Matt Wolken wrote on the corporate blog today. He noted that companies’ abilities to pull “knowledge and insights out of data” will distinguish companies that survive from ones that don’t.

The results of this acquisition, Wolken said, can include expanding StatSoft to deliver natural language processing for big data analysis by combining it with Dell’s Kitenga Analytics solution.

In its own announcement, StatSoft envisioned combining its “big data predictive modeling and data mining solutions for various industries with Dell’s wide range of data management and software capabilities on its x86 server platform, all to deliver “big data analytics at a Dell price-point for unbeatable ROI.”

This purchase is the latest in a series of acquisitions that the Round Rock, Tex.-based computer maker has made to boost its chops in software and services. Previously, the company made such acquisitions as software solution provider Quest Software and cloud computing startup Boomi.

Wolken also pointed out that, in addition to StatSoft’s capabilities in analytics, the purchase will help Dell expand its international presence. Based in Tulsa, Okla., StatSoft has operations in more than two dozen countries.

Terms of the deal were not made public, but StatSoft’s employees are expected to continue working in their current locations within Dell’s information management group.