IBM's planned acquisition of SPSS Inc. is likely to set off a new wave of consolidation in the business-intelligence market, as more software vendors look to beef up their predictive analytics capabilities, according to a Forrester Research report.

Forrester predicts that in the coming year, vendors will look to partner or acquire companies specializing in this area, including Accelrys Software, Angoss, FICO, KXEN, and Portrait Software. SAP, in particular, is likely to make a predictive analytics acquisition, the research firm says.

"Any BI vendor that fails to realign around a strong predictive focus will find itself on the sidelines of this new era of future-facing analytics," according to Tuesday's report, "Business Intelligence Polishes Its Crystal Ball," co-authored by James Kobielus, Boris Evelson, and Leslie Owens.

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