Tibco Brings Enterprise-Wide Approach to Integration and Operational PerformanceTibco Brings Enterprise-Wide Approach to Integration and Operational Performance

Tibco supports the “optimization” level with PortalBuilder, which provides integration across the enterprise and enables organizations to quickly assemble an enterprise portal to access applications, information or services inside or outside of the company. This product is quite mature, with major deployments in Global 2000 organizations. Ventana Research has seen many of these organizations improve their overall performance by using Rendezvous and BusinessWorks with BusinessFactor and delivering information through PortalBuilder.

Market Impact

Tibco’s move to be much more than just "plumbing" for the enterprise has gone pretty much unnoticed by the major BI, data integration, and enterprise application vendors. While many of the application and application server providers talk a lot about — and may have — first-generation approaches to master data management and integration via business process management, Tibco is already delivering.

Tibco faces significant challenges in changing its corporate culture from simply selling “plumbing for information messaging and processing.” Tibco is fully cognizant of this and is training and expanding its skills set to better service specific business needs of organizations.

Moving beyond its historical “information bus” roots is a critical next step in the growth of Tibco’s business. This backbone, integration, and optimization strategy is well thought through, and while Tibco will compete and partner with IBM, WebMethods, and other vendors, Ventana Research considers Tibco a key provider of integration and information management technology with specific tools and applications for improving the operational performance and visibility of an organization.

Recommendation

Companies focused on providing a right and real time approach to monitoring and measuring information in their enterprise from a business activity or process perspective should examine Tibco. It has a company and product roadmap that moves well beyond information processing. While the market is converging and the role for ERP/CRM, application server, and BI providers is confused, IT managers should take heed and examine what Tibco is doing to support business needs. With a centralized and sophisticated metadata environment, Tibco has linked together information and the business users’ needs in an effective manner that can help both IT and business improve the visibility and performance of their operations. Ventana Research recommends that companies look closely at Tibco and examine how its approach can leverage existing ERP/CRM systems to improve operational performance.