Tibco’s CTO Tommy Joseph also defended the company’s proprietary integration server. As reported in Tuesday’s Computergram, SeeBeyond Technology Corp criticized the proprietary nature of competing data integration servers such as Tibco’s, and said that a new version of its own integration server, eGate, will soon be J2EE-based.
Joseph said: From a technical point of view, there are some arguments in favor of [the data integration server being J2EE-based], but those benefits are for the vendor, not for the customer. For example, being a J2EE container means you automatically get some things like thread management, load balancing and so on. But we already have all of those things anyway. You absolutely need to support J2EE, as well as Corba, COM and everything else. But you don’t need to be a J2EE server yourself to do that.
Of SeeBeyond’s argument that its eGate is easier to manage and monitor because it is J2EE-based, and can therefore be managed much like companies’ existing J2EE application servers, Joseph said: Monitoring and managing your applications environment is not just about monitoring your application server. You have databases, applications, the network, integrations and much more. Only if everything in the enterprise was J2EE would being J2EE-based make a big difference.
Meanwhile, Joseph claimed that its soon-to-be-launched BusinessFactor is more than a monitoring tool for Tibco-driven data integrations. We’ve already gone from just doing data integrations to managing end-to-end business processes, and that means having to include machine-to-human, human-to-human, and human-to-machine processes. BusinessFactor will then give enterprises visibility into those processes, allow them to compare them to predetermined metrics, and change them. It’s about business process optimization, he said.
Also in the works is a plan to expand the role of its BusinessWorks product, which today is an integration offering that combines a GUI for creating and defining integration scenarios, an engine that automates routine sequences of tasks, and a web-based interface for monitoring applications, system resources and processes. Joseph said that the product will gradually become the framework for all of Tibco’s products, making them more tightly integrated and easier to use. That work should be done by around September.
The company said it will also make enhancements to its core data integration offerings over the course of the year. According to the company, its enterprise backbone, business integration and business optimization product will enable companies to conduct real-time business.
However, the Palo Alto, California-based company has some business issues of its own. In the fourth quarter to November 30, 2002, revenue was down 17.3% to $41.8m. While the company posted net income for the quarter of $3.4m, the loss for the year was $94.6m, up from a loss of $13.2m on revenue 36.2% lower at $159.1m.
Source: Computerwire
