IBM to Acquire SPSS

Big news in analytics world. The article says to do better predictive analytics. In the enterprise SPSS and SAS have been heavily used since the 6os. Quite an acquisition, makes sense to strong support IBM's consulting, which most times includes an analytical component. Personally I think all useful analytics are 'predictive', unless you are trying to understand some historical changes, the only analytics that are useful are those that either predict some future state, even if that is the same as the current state.