JDA to buy Blue Yonder to extend AI

JDA announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Blue Yonder, a supply chain software vendor focused on applying artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to retail. The announcement comes shortly after JDA debuted its Luminate portfolio of products that are designed to help customers leverage a host of next generation technologies. Nucleus expects this acquisition to accelerate JDA’s expansion of its Luminate product line with the capabilities that Blue Yonder delivers, as well as enabling JDA to cross sell to its existing customer base. However, as with many other announcements concerning deployments of AI, the value that customers are able to realize with the technology often falls short of the initial marketing hype.