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IBM has signed a definitive agreement to take over The Weather Company’s B2B, mobile and cloud-based web properties, which would include WSI, weather.com, Weather Underground and The Weather Company brand. IBM will not acquire The Weather Channel - the TV segment, instead will license data and analytics of weather forecast from IBM, as a part of a long-term contract.

Financial details of the deal remain undisclosed.

It is expected that the expertise and technology from two firms would serve as a foundation the new Watson IoT Unit and Watson IoT Cloud platform, which builds on the commitment of $3B by IBM in March 2015 to invest in concerned services and offerings.

The planned acquisition is expected to bring cognitive and analytics platform from IBM close to the dynamic cloud data platform of the Weather Company, to power the mobile app, which is fourth most-used in the US. It handles 26 billion inquiries each day that come to its cloud-based services.

IBM Solutions Portfolio and Research, Senior Vice President, John Kelly, said, “The Weather Company’s extremely high-volume data platform, coupled with IBM’s 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.”

“This powerful cloud platform will position IBM to arm entire industries with deep multimodal insights that will help enterprises gain clarity and take action from the oceans of data being generated around them,” Kelly added.

A press release said that, upon closing, the product and technology assets of The Weather Company would be acquired by IBM. They include precision forecasting capabilities, meteorological data science experts, a high-volume cloud platform that ingests, processes, analyzes and distributes enormous data sets at scale.

The Weather Company, Chairman and CEO, David Kenny, said, “We see the next wave of improved forecasting coming from the intersection of atmospheric science, computer science and analytics.”

“Upon closing of this deal, The Weather Company will continue to be able to help improve the precision of weather forecasts and further deepen IBM’s Watson IoT capabilities by enabling the integration of global atmosphere and weather insights with enterprise information to create disruptive industry solutions that optimize decision-making,” Kenny added.

-Sumana