TIBCO Transforms Rendezvous Messaging into High Performance Network Appliance

| Feb 6, 2009 | Application Infrastructure | Competitive Intelligence Report

| Analyst: Michael Meehan

Current Perspective: Very Positive
Vendor Importance: Very High
Market Impact: Moderate

Event Summary

February 4, 2009 – TIBCO Software has delivered the first hardware offering in the company's history, TIBCO Messaging Appliance P-7500. This new offering from an established messaging industry vendor offers a new approach to messaging latency reduction by taking an approach that lowers latency, improves predictability and provides increased throughput by implementing TIBCO messaging in hardware.

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Positive on TIBCO’s release of a rack mountable, high-speed messaging network appliance. The Messaging Appliance P-7500 builds on the company’s established Rendezvous customer base, offering a ten-fold increase in messaging volume and a 50% decrease in latency compared to the software-based edition, down below ten microseconds. It uses a new form factor to break new ground in TIBCO’s core business.

• Vendor Importance: Very high to TIBCO, because it is breaking away from the label of being a software vendor and establishing itself as an overall business infrastructure and solutions vendor. TIBCO is well positioned to put other in-house technologies, such as integration, application management and business activity monitoring into an appliance format, a market in which only IBM has made significant headway to date.

• Market Impact: High on the messaging and integration market, because TIBCO has moved beyond the constraints of enterprise software in order to achieve a new level of technical performance. Competitors such as Oracle, Progress, Software AG, Red Hat and Sun will need to counter with their own high performance messaging and integration strategies. Meanwhile TIBCO will have a ready-made market for the P-7500 with its existing Rendezvous customer base.

CLIENTS ONLY

Current Perspective

Competitive Positives and Concerns

Recommended Vendor Actions

| Client access - Full report in Application Infrastructure | More information

Recommended Competitor Actions

• IBM should view this release as strengthening its DataPower story. While TIBCO has made a fine start with the P-7500, it cannot match the maturity or breadth of the DataPower line at this time. Yet it confirms IBM’s vision that much of what is considered software infrastructure actually works better as a network appliance. IBM should position itself as the reigning king of the high volume messaging appliance market.

• Oracle needs to get into the appliance game, particularly with the acquisition of the Tuxedo transactional software business from BEA. It may choose to partner with Cisco or small vendors like Layer 7 and Vordel to put its messaging and integration software into an appliance or it may seek to acquire one of those small vendors, but it does not want to find itself running up against multiple competitors in those spaces with plug-and-play high performance hardware.

• Cisco needs to reinvigorate the marketing and strategy for its AON and ACE XML Gateway products before they become irrelevant. Should TIBCO successfully convert a good portion of its Rendezvous customer base to the P-7500, it will eclipse Cisco in the messaging appliance market. A partnership with Oracle would allow Cisco to engage with stakeholders outside the network center and provide a wide array of application infrastructure functionality that could be built into a device.

• Integration software vendors such as Progress, Software AG and Sun need to respond with their own high performance approaches to the market. They do not necessarily have to get experimental with form factors, but they should recognize, as TIBCO seemingly has, that SOA market is shifting from agility to performance. Customers have gotten used to integrating disparate systems and creating dynamic services. The new battleground is to scale those services and to do so at high velocity.

Recommended Competitor Actions

• Rendezvous users absolutely should consider upgrading to the P-7500 if they anticipate 20% or greater increases in messaging volume during the next two years. They should also demand the P-7500 pricing stay in line with current Rendezvous pricing as TIBCO surely will not want to lose that revenue in the current economic climate. The device offers impressive gains in scalability and reliability with a bare minimum of disruption to continuity.

• Potential customers who have not bought messaging appliances should consider IBM DataPower, Cisco AON, Layer 7 and Vordel in addition to TIBCO as those products are much more mature. One critical factor to assess is what beyond messaging is the company hoping to get from an appliance. TIBCO does not have as diverse a product line as of yet and first-time customers in this market should seek a detailed appliance roadmap from the vendor.

• While devices can move messages at wire speed, customers need to identify when they are seeking a brute force messaging solution and when they are seeking a more complex integration solution, which is where an ESB would come into play. The two often work in concert, separating duties between them. Those who upgrade from Rendezvous to the P-7500 should make sure the appliance still works in concert with existing ESBs, particularly if they are not the ActiveMatrix Service Bus.

CLIENTS ONLY

Current Perspective

Competitive Positives and Concerns

Recommended Vendor Actions

| Client access - Full report in Application Infrastructure | More information

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