IBM (NYSE: IBM) bought another analytics company last week, purchasing i2, a British company that is based in Cambridge, the same town as Autonomy. Must be a good week for large American technology companies to buy technology properties based in Cambridge.

i2 helps firms ferret out crime and fraud through their intelligence analytics package, which is used by law enforcement, defense, banking, retail and any place that needs help sorting through the myriad of data sources to find the nuggets of information that matter to them--whether that's employees stealing information or terrorists planning an attack.

Like every other field, whether it's web site analytics or business metrics of any sort, we are faced with an embarrassment of riches, of too much information to sort through. How do you find the data points that really matter to you or that reflect a serious problem?

Writing on Internet Evolution, IBM's Todd Watson saw this a neat fit within the IBM analytics solution family:

Using IBM real-time analytical solutions in combination with the technologies of i2, public agencies and private enterprises battling fraud will now have the capability to better collect, analyze, and process all the relevant data at their disposal. In the past, data overload often led to critical information or opportunities being missed.

IBM has been collecting analytics companies over the last couple of years including Sterling Commerce, Unica and Coremetrics. This is just another feather in the IBM analytics cap and it should be helpful to those organizations hoping to not only find commercial information, but also other types that can help protect a country or company from internal and external abuse.

For more information:
- see Todd Watson's Internet Evolution blog post

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