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Tibco tailors cloud for snug custom-fit

Adrian Bridgwater
Adrian Bridgwater

Tibco has been through a good many changes over the last half decade — as a result, the company’s product set needs some deconstruction, clarification and extrapolation.

Where better to do that than at the ‘Tibco Now’ 2018 event held in Las Vegas?

As the company that we know as a specialist in integration, data analytics and event-processing software, Tibco is also zoned in on API management and wider cloud services.

Indeed, the focus for this event is directed at the Tibco Connected Intelligence Cloud (TCIC), a unified set of services and capabilities that provides an entirely cloud-based experience for applications that utilise AI, IoT and blockchain across industries such as financial services, healthcare, manufacturing.

This analysis will expand during the day zero presentation and keynotes.

Beyond platitudes, into substance

It’s always tough to listen to companies talk about their ‘total’ corporate positioning – they just can’t help saying ‘turning [data] insights into action’ and/or ‘new ways to leverage innovation’. It’s (arguably) unfortunate really – we’d probably miss these platitudes if they weren’t noted, but the same time, what we’re really looking for is some substance in terms of applied software tools and functions.

So what’s happening inside the Tibco world of cloud, exactly?

TCIC is now being charged up with new extensions to help work with data tasks relating to integration, messaging and analytics… there’s a palpable sense of creating a more tailored, custom-cut, tighter fit set of cloud components going on.

As business now starts to adopt the cloud model of datacentre-based services-centric virtualised computing, we inevitably get a lot of disparate data tools — interconnecting these pools into a single channel is the challenge of our modern time.

Full lifecycle APIs

The customisable functions in TCIC are dedicated to tasks in business event processing, visual analytics and what Tibco is calling ‘full lifecycle’ APIs.

NOTE: We need to define what the steps in the API lifecycle really are and we will do there and link that story here.

New TCIC products include: Tibco Cloud Events to manage event processing tailored for the cloud; Tibco Cloud Nimbus for business process modelling; and Tibco Cloud Starters to manage customisable ‘cross-capability template applications’ being built by Tibco Labs, a collaborative programme for customers and partners.

Tibco also provides its own blockchain network product called branded product it calls Blocklayer and Tibco Cloud AuditSafe (Beta) is an immutable cloud-based audit ledger backed by Tibco Blocklayer.

Enhancements to existing TCIC products include Tibco Cloud Mashery and Tibco Mashery Local – these are products for full lifecycle API management and are available in user’s own datacentre as containerised microservices.

Cloud is becoming more granular… more componentised, more multi-channeled, more API connected, more specialised and more micro-containerised. The concept of providing more intelligence to handle these layers of complexity is what Tibco is working to bring to market. It’s time get fitted for a tighter custom-made garment… off the peg just won’t do.