IBM expands in big data

Article Excerpt

IBM $139.57 (New York symbol IBM; Shares outstanding: 918.0 million; Market cap: $128.1 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 4.5%; www.ibm.com) continues to shift its focus to faster-growing fields. They include analytics software to process increasingly large amounts of data. As part of that plan, it has just bought Australian-based Oniqua. The firm is a leader in performance management systems for asset-intensive industries like mining, oil and gas and utilities. IBM has yet to reveal the sales price. Oniqua uses the connectivity of the Internet of Things (IoT) to monitor over $12 billion in assets. It then utilizes artificial intelligence and analysis to determine optimal maintenance and repair schedules. The goal is to reduce downtime and lower costs. For IBM, the acquisition lets it tap a new and expanding market. IBM is a buy. buy…