{"id":15521,"date":"2016-11-17T08:27:29","date_gmt":"2016-11-17T13:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/changing-as-fast-as-the-weather\/"},"modified":"2016-11-17T08:27:29","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T13:27:29","slug":"changing-as-fast-as-the-weather","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/changing-as-fast-as-the-weather\/","title":{"rendered":"Changing as Fast as the Weather!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Weather Channel has been your trusted partner for delivering the weather for decades.\u00a0 When severe weather strikes nearby, Jim Cantore is there on the scene.\u00a0 Need an umbrella for your walk to work?\u00a0 The Weather Channel mobile app (a top 20 mobile property by unique visitors) has your answer in a few swipes.1<\/sup> \u00a0Looking for a way to procrastinate from writing your TOM blogpost?\u00a0 Weather.com has enough clickbait to get you through finals.<\/p>\n

\"l8s\"<\/a>
Weather Channel has been your trusted weather information provider for years Source: www.weather.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Weather Company has made its brand \u2013 and a fair amount of money \u2013 through a traditional media business model: produce weather content (for both television and digital properties) and monetize it through advertising and distribution fees.\u00a0 The operating model to support this required editorial and production talent to create content and a sophisticated advertising sales team.\u00a0 The model has been quite lucrative and resilient, allowing the company to thrive since its founding in 1980 (by HBS alum Frank Batten) and endure private equity ownership since 2008.2<\/sup><\/p>\n

Therefore, it might come as a surprise that underneath this sleepy legacy media fa\u00e7ade, The Weather Company has quickly been transforming into a digital technology powerhouse. The transformation began in earnest when David Kenny (HBS \u201886) took the helm in January 2012.\u00a0 The former chief of Akamai, a cloud services provider, Kenny foresaw a world where weather information and the Internet of Things collided.3<\/sup> Weather impacts almost everything.\u00a0 The question was whether a traditional media company could build the digital technology muscle required to be the market-leading weather data solution provider.<\/p>\n

Kenny started doubling down in his business-to-business segment by acquiring Weather Central in 2012.4<\/sup>\u00a0 Weather Central predominantly sold weather solutions to media companies, such as products that powered local broadcasters\u2019 forecasts.\u00a0 The Weather Central acquisition bolstered the company\u2019s B2B salesforce and gave it additional expertise in developing and packaging weather solutions for businesses.<\/p>\n

Kenny then turned to the other end of the digital technology funnel, data acquisition.\u00a0 The Weather Company acquired Weather Underground, a weather media company that had 100,000 personal weather stations deployed among its consumers.5<\/sup>\u00a0 While the main synergies of the deal were in the traditional media business, The Weather Company now had access to proprietary weather data through the personal weather stations to go along with several other public and proprietary weather data sets.<\/p>\n

Despite a robust portfolio of data sources to work with and a larger B2B sales engine, The Weather Company still needed compelling products to sell to businesses.\u00a0 This required a data engine to digest, interpret, and package all their data into services that would provide actionable insights to business customers.\u00a0 Kenny brought in CTO Bryson Koehler to build out this engine.\u00a0 An operating model once built on editors, producers, and ad sales personnel was now dependent on software engineers and data scientists \u2013 450 of them, and an IT budget that had 60-70% allocated to maintenance shifted to new product and infrastructure development.\u00a0 The result was the SUN (Storage Utility Network) Platform, a data ingestion and synthesis platform that handled seven times the number of daily data requests as Google.6<\/sup><\/p>\n

The Weather Company has leveraged their new business-to-business software-as-a-service operating model to sell compelling products to weather-sensitive industries.\u00a0 A particularly powerful example is aviation, where The Weather Company Total Turbulence solution is used by most major airlines to detect and avoid turbulence.7<\/sup><\/p>\n

\"IBM<\/a>
IBM Senior Vice President Bob Picciano, left, joins The Weather Company Chairman and CEO David Kenny as they announce IBM’s acquisition of TWC.
Source: http:\/\/fortune.com\/2015\/10\/30\/ibm-weather-channel-2\/<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

The transition of The Weather Company\u2019s business and operating model from a media company to a digital technology company reached a milestone when IBM announced it would acquire The Weather Company\u2019s Product and Technology assets (including WSI [the B2B business], the mobile application, weather.com, Weather Underground, and related digital assets) in October 2015. John Kelly, senior vice president of IBM\u2019s Solutions Portfolio praised\u00a0the deal, saying \u201cThe Weather Company\u2019s extremely high-volume data platform, coupled with IBM\u2019s global cloud and the advanced cognitive computing capabilities of Watson, will be unsurpassed in the Internet of Things, providing our clients significant competitive advantage as they link their business and sensor data with weather and other pertinent information in real time\u201d.8<\/sup><\/p>\n

IBM and The Weather Company still have much to accomplish.\u00a0 Adoption of weather solutions is non-existent in many industries.\u00a0 There has been much talk about revolutionizing supply chains with weather data, but to-date little has been done.\u00a0 Still, the infrastructure has been laid to \u2018map the atmosphere\u2019 and deliver valuable, business-altering weather insights.\u00a0 Maybe The Weather Company can<\/em> change as fast as the weather!<\/p>\n

(729 words)<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

1<\/sup>\u201cThe 2015 US Mobile App Report.\u201d ComScore<\/em>. September 22, 2015. http:\/\/www.comscore.com<\/a>, accessed November 15, 2016.<\/p>\n

2<\/sup>\u201cFrank Batten Sr. dies at 82; executive who founded Weather Channel,\u201d LA Times,<\/em> September 11, 2009, http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/obituaries\/la-me-frank-batten11-2009sep11-story.html<\/a>, accessed November 15, 2016.<\/p>\n

3<\/sup>Kanter, Rosabeth Moss, and Jonathan Cohen.\u00a0“Whither the Weather (Company): Forecasting 2016.”<\/a>\u00a0性视界 Business School Case 316-143, January 2016. (Revised March 2016.)<\/p>\n

4<\/sup>Jason Samenow, Washington Post, <\/em>August 9, 2012, https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/capital-weather-gang\/post\/weather-channel-domination-member-company-wsi-acquires-weather-central\/2012\/08\/09\/8cf00774-e250-11e1-98e7-89d659f9c106_blog.html<\/a>, accessed November 15, 2016.<\/p>\n

5<\/sup>Dr. Jeff Masters, \u201cWunderground.com sold to The Weather Channel Companies,\u201d Wunderground.com, July 2, 2012, https:\/\/www.wunderground.com\/blog\/JeffMasters\/comment.html?entrynum=2143<\/a>, accessed November 15, 2016.<\/p>\n

6<\/sup>Doug Henschen, \u201cThe Weather Company: Cloud Journey Requires Cultural Change,\u201d InformationWeek<\/em>, April 28, 2015, http:\/\/www.informationweek.com\/strategic-cio\/executive-insights-and-innovation\/the-weather-company-cloud-journey-requires-cultural-change\/d\/d-id\/1319831<\/a>, accessed November 15, 2016.<\/p>\n

7<\/sup>Scott McCartney, \u201cNew Way Airlines Avoid Turbulence,\u201d Wall Street Journal<\/em>, March 26, 2014, http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/SB10001424052702304688104579463591411121738<\/a>, accessed November 15, 2016.<\/p>\n

8<\/sup>\u201cIBM Plans to Acquire The Weather Company\u2019s Product and Technology Businesses; Extends Power of Watson to the Internet of Things,\u201d The Weather Company press release. Armonk, NY and Atlanta, GA, October 28, 2015. https:\/\/business.weather.com\/news\/ibm-plans-to-acquire-the-weather-companys-product-and-technology-businesses-extends-power-of-watson-to-the-internet-of-things<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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