IBM announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Netezza Corporation  for approximately $1.7 billion, after adjusting for cash.

Netezza is a leading provider of high-performance analytics in a data warehousing appliance that can be up and running in a matter of hours, handling complex analytic queries 10 to 100 times faster than traditional systems.

Netezza will expand IBM’s business analytics initiatives to help clients gain faster insights into their business information, with increased performance at a lower cost.

This is IBM’s fifth major acquisition in the business and web analytics space. Earlier IBM acquired SPSS, Coremetrics, Unica and OpenPages.