TIBCO Software Inc. is rolling out a series of software capabilities that help business users get their work done in more natural ways -- reflecting human workflow patterns, ad-hoc communications approaches and self-directed user-driven insight that reflect how businesses really work. In the same way that social media, smartphones and music devices have enabled people to more naturally interact with consumer technology, TIBCO's new software capabilities are designed to show the business benefits of connecting people naturally to technology.
To realize this vision, TIBCO has developed: a new communication application that allows the right information to find you (tibbr™); new "software as a self-service" models that enable users to analyze complex data, gain insights and make decisions without requiring IT involvement (TIBCO Spotfire® 3.1); and new process workflows, reflecting 18 popular human workflow patterns that were identified through expert research across multiple industries (TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM).
"People are not simply looking for more information faster; in fact, they're overwhelmed with data," said Ram Menon, TIBCO's Executive VP of Worldwide Marketing. "Instead, people need the right information at the right time in the right place and in the right context. We have built applications like tibbr, ActiveMatrix® BPM and Spotfire Analytics to deliver on those requirements, improving workforce productivity."
Distinguished as the first workplace communication tool that allows information to find people instead of the other way around, tibbr -- unlike conventional social utilities -- allows users to follow a range of granular subjects and machines, not just people. Since its beta introduction last year, tibbr has proven its value in several real-world environments and TIBCO is now introducing a tibbr application for the iPhone as well as forthcoming support for smart phones.
The critical driving force in the enterprise is not tied to people anymore, but rather contextual information and expertise about subjects relevant to a person's job. That information can be sent by people or automatically generated by systems or machines. With this subject-based approach, people are decoupled from content to allow more flexibility in what information a user needs and wants to receive at precisely the right time.
tibbr was most recently used at the World Economic Forum in Cartagena, Colombia to enable 400 Latin American business leaders to share and receive information in the form, manner and timing of their preference. TIBCO is also using tibbr at TUCON® 2010 to provide updates on schedule changes, announcements and special opportunities, and deliver additional information that supplements general and breakout sessions. The software also makes it easier for attendees interested in specific topics like business analytics or industries like financial services to get a TUCON experience that delivers the most value for them. Each registered attendee has access to tibbr, including the new iPhone application.
TIBCO is introducing TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM as a new part of the TIBCO ActiveMatrix product family. This new product is designed to make it easy for business people to create and manage business processes and rules, while managing connections to enterprise systems in the background. As a result, business process changes can be made faster and with fewer errors.
ActiveMatrix BPM also incorporates 18 common human workflow patterns that can be activated with a single click to simplify business process creation. The workflow patterns -- commonly known as "van der Aalst patterns" -- are based on scientific research into human behavior published by Professor Wil van der Aalst at the Eindhoven University of Technology and Professor Arthur ter Hofstede at the Queensland Institute of Technology. For instance, accounts payable organizations often require the individual who issues a payment to be separate from the individual who originally approved the payment. Previously, custom coding would have been required to ensure compliance with this requirement, but this and other workflow patterns are immediately available to the user with ActiveMatrix BPM.
TIBCO Spotfire 3.1, the latest version of TIBCO's in-memory analytics platform, responds faster than traditional BI and with more on-the-fly flexibility than spreadsheets, enabling everyone in the enterprise -- whether in business, technical, or scientific roles -- to easily analyze complex data, customize their discovery experience and share their story through mashups, portals or interactive dashboards. With this release, TIBCO makes predictive analytics a mainstream feature of any business application, allowing any enterprise decision-maker to perform "what-if" scenarios on demand and instantly find new insights in complex data.
While traditional business intelligence systems can take months to install and configure, TIBCO Spotfire enables business people to start analyzing information within minutes, either through Spotfire Web Player or a powerful desktop-installed application. This powerful "software as a self-service" model means faster speed to insight even for unanticipated analytics needs.
