No longer can we call IBM slow.  It has snatched up marketing software companies as if they were going out of style.  Today, Friday the 13th no less, IBM announced the purchase of Unica Corporation for $480 million, adding to its juggernaut of WebSphere Commerce (a B2B retail platform) and Sterling Commerce (a B2B solution set). With the deal, IBM gets Unica's 1500 customers (adding to the 2000 from Coremetrics) plus about 500 employees from Unica.  The deal is expected to close by the end of the year.

IBM reports that the Unica will be brought into its "Business Analytics and Optimization Consulting organization - a team of 5,000 consultants and a network of analytics solution centers, backed by an overall investment of more than $11 billion in acquisitions in the last five years".  If this is case, the IBM is implementing a strategy that a few have thought about:  integrate web analytics into overall business analytics.  (See my earlier blogpost on the Coremetrics aquisiton.)

It will be interesting to see as well whether and how IBM can arm its workforce of 5000 consultants with the wisdom of marketing analytics.  Given that IBM makes money on services than software or equipment, the acquisiton is certainly a play to their strength.

Now with Omniture (bought by Adobe), Coremetrics, and Unica out of the game, IBM's business analytics competitors have no other serious web analytics contender to buy, except perhaps WebTrends.  This also leave Google Analytics uncontested as the leading free tool and Yahoo! Analytics as a distant second.

One other sweetener for IBM: Unica is their current analytics provider, so maybe that is one invoice Big Blue can cancel with its $2 billion buying spree.