• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, February 4, 2016

IBM recently closed a deal to acquire The Weather Company cloud-based properties including weather.com, Weather Underground, WSI, with plans to integrate the data with the Watson IoT Cloud platform.

The Weather Company CEO David Kenny will lead the IBM Watson Unit. The initiative builds on a $3 billion commitment IBM made in March 2015 to invest in the Internet of Things.

The Weather Company's cable TV segment was not acquired by IBM, but will license weather forecast data and analytics from IBM under a long-term contract.

The deal allows IBM to combine meteorology with computer, behavior, cognitive and advanced analytics, according to Inhi Suh, VP of strategy and business development for IBM Analytics.

Jeremy Steinberg, global head of sales for The Weather Company, says the technology maps 2.2 billion locations every 15 minutes, supporting the tens of millions of people using the app daily. IBM will take the data and leverage cognitive computing to help drive business decisions, from retail to pharmaceutical. "We can identify things like juice sales increasing during periods of high wind," he says. "The ability to map sentiment analysis for marketers to drive key performance indicators can be pretty powerful."  

The Weather Company analyzes about 44 weather conditions in specific locations because a certain mix of conditions in Denver are different than in Miami, and the decisions the consumers make are very different in each city, Steinberg says. It spans into supporting social content, email, and CRM. 

For advertisers, the combination of data will provide more accurate ad targeting by pinpointing in near real time when a consumer might need a specific type of service.

Through Watson IBM will deliver more cognitive services and predictive capabilities for businesses by combining forecast data with product, customer, and supply chain data. The combination could also provide health information.