Remember the SAT test? Well as an analogy - SPSS : MS Excel :: the NFL : throwing a dried out Nerf with your cousin. When NASA wants to run a regression, this is the statistics software they fire up. Quantitative pros in scientific research, financial analysis, and other stats heavy disciplines have depended on SPSS for three decades. The company name is an initialism for Statistical Package for the Social Sciences
Three Stanford researchers - Norman Nie, C. Hadlai Hull and Dale Bent - developed the first version of the software as an academic exercise. It's 1968 and so they distribute tapes of the source code to the research community...for free. The people go nuts. The team brings the project to University of Chicago. Eventually they have to form a corporation (rats) because the revenues are threatening the university's non-profit status. Two decades of growth later, they bring in professional management. Jack Noonan arrives as CEO, and he continues in that role today. Nie is still Chairman and many original employees are also still active.
Dimensions: 1,200 people x 38 years x $230MM
Funding: Sweat of Founders, benevolence of U of C, no financial backing
Customers: Hard core analysts in scientific research, financial services, telecom, etc.
Location: Chicago [Downtown] + www.spss.com
