Tibco Announces 'Tibnet'--Internet Products With Cisco Software

In a press conference on December 9, featuring representatives of Cisco Systems, Informix Software, Sun Microsystems and Reuters, Tibco launched its new so-called Tibnet family of Internet-based middleware products. The press conference--which took place in San Francisco and was simulcast to New York City and London--followed close on the heels of the vendor's decision to remake itself as two separate companies (D&IS, December 2). Tibco Finance, which is meant to work in closer coordination with parent company Reuters to continue selling products to Tibco's core financial markets customers, and Tibco Software, which is meant to grow into a larger vendor with a much broader potential customer base. (Tibco's split-up had not yet taken effect at the time of the press conference, thus it wasn't clear under which unit's auspices Tibnet will be sold.)

John Mathon, vice president of Tibco's Internet division, says that Tibnet is essentially Tibco's publish and subscribe and subject-based addressing technology married with Cisco Systems' router technology. This Tibco/Cisco alliance was first mentioned in a speech by Cisco's chief executive officer John Chambers at a Tibco user conference in California this spring (Trading Systems Technology, July 22).

Tibnet is designed to bring the publish and subscribe data delivery standard that Tibco has deployed for years in trading rooms to the Internet and intranets. The new product line leads Tibco further down the path of shrinkwrapping, streamlining and productizing its software systems. Previously, Tibco had placed much emphasis on system integration and customized implementations. More recently, with the release of Rendezvous (D&IS, September 11, 1995), Tibco has sought to modify that business model.

With the release of Tibnet, Tibco has also begun its effort to market its publish and subscribe method, now also known as the server-push model of Internet communications, in earnest as a solution to the bandwidth and traffic problems associated with the Internet and the World Wide Web.

Tibnet will be aimed initially at corporate intranets off the trading floor as well as at Internet service and content providers supplying services to the Web. However, Mathon says that he believes that in two years' time all financial information, including real-time financial information, will be delivered via Internet technologies--on both the local and wide area levels.

Tibco also plans to propose Tibnet's publish and subscribe model to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as an industry standard for disseminating information via the Internet and the World Wide Web.