I was pointed to an interesting post on the growing prevalence of R support in statistical packages.

In terms of OSS, we are seeing wholesale integration of R into such packages as Spotfire and SPSS.  SPSS it seems is even offering a menu system to access R routines! I’ve also heard rumors that SAS is demoing an R interface in their SAS/STAT Studio product.

In my opinion, integrating R into each of these packages will have the effect of making statistical code and models portable across packages. This will eventually dilute the value of the packages statistically and make their value being evaluated on ability to manipulate and import data, connect to databases, and how effectively they put together their menu systems.

On one hand, I woudn't say that Spotfire has a "wholesale integration of R," but with the recent addition of S+ to the Spotfire platform, it's clear that our support for R is stronger than ever before. 

The point of the original comment stands.  But even with the growing stature of R, there's a whole lot of value packaged up in the "ability to manipulate and import data.. and how effectively they put together their menu systems."  Offering end-users the ability to easily manipulate their data, and effectively interact with it is the entire value proposition for several software vendors, and a big part of the value for others (including Spotfire).  Statistical and predictive analytics are becoming a bigger and more important part of Business Intelligence, but even though they comprise a relatively small part of most BI vendors' offers, BI is still a multi-billion dollar market.

In any case, if R becomes the defacto language for statistical modeling, I like Spotfire's chances of competing with SAS and other BI vendors on quality of user experience!