IBM close to buying Weather Co’s digital assets for more than $2 bn

International Business Machines Corp (IBM) is close to buying the digital assets of Weather Company in a deal that could be valued at more than $2 billion, The Wall Street Journal yesterday reported, citing unnamed sources.

The deal does not include its TV weather channel, but includes digital businesses such as the website and app, intellectual property, infrastructure and data, the report said.

Post closing, Weather Company's CEO, David Kenny is expected to join IBM, the report added.

IBM had early this year signed a global strategic alliance with Weather Company to integrate real-time weather insights into business to improve operational performance and decision-making.

As part of the alliance, The Weather Company will shift its massive weather data services platform to the IBM Cloud and integrate its data with IBM analytics and cloud services.

The Weather Company, based in Georgia, is owned by a consortium comprising of NBCUniversal and private equity firms The Blackstone Group and Bain Capital.

It operates four divisions - the Broadcast Division comprising The Weather Channel, products for radio, newspapers, digital cable services, and interactive television; Digital Division that include weather.com, wunderground.com, intellicast.com and products for broadband and mobile platforms; Professional Division that has business-to-business weather services, particularly for the media, aviation, insurance and energy sectors, and the International Division that includes global and local B2C and B2B professional and gov-met services.