Published on the 06/09/2018 | Written by Pat Pilcher

IoT, Machine Learning, The Cloud… I need a cup of tea and rest…

TIBCO –one of the largest integrator and analytic companies around – kicked off their annual #TIBCONOW shindig in Las Vegas overnight with a flurry of announcements around analytics, machine learning, IIoT and cloud, among others.

So who are TIBCO? They launched in 1997, as The Information Bus Company (TIBCO). The TIBCO Information bus software was initially designed to allow real-time, human free digital communication to happen in financial markets. Since then TIBCO’s information technology has been used by numerous Fortune 500 companies including SAP, IBM, and Oracle.

“TIBCO are also making a play in the IoT space with a strategic alliance to deliver IIoT solutions.”

The first big announcements coming out of TIBCO Now see enhanced capabilities for the TIBCO Connected Intelligence Cloud (TCIC) thanks to a raft of new products. The company says that the additions to TCIC will provide users with customisable functionality, ranging from business event processing through to visual analytics.

The new TCIC products announced include:

• TIBCO Cloud Events: a cloud-based event processing platform
• TIBCO Cloud Nimbus: Cloud-based business process modelling
• TIBCO Cloud Starters: a set of customisable, cross-capability template apps
• TIBCO Cloud AuditSafe (Beta): Cloud-based audit ledger that uses TIBCO’s blockchain network

Staying with all things cloud-related, TIBCO also announced that their Data Science offering would be available via the Amazon Web Services (AWS) marketplace. TIBCO’s Data Science allows businesses to gather, analyse and share data insights, leveraging machine learning.

Data Science also allows citizen data scientists (that’s non-statistical wonks like you and me) to make sense of big data by eliminating the need for complex coding. In practice, this translates into code-free workflows to support data transformation and machine learning. Data Science also helps streamline the sharing and annotating of data, making it easier to share insights across a business.

The big payoff with the AWS marketplace announcement is that TIBCO Data Science eliminates the need to move data by executing data preparation and machine learning computations within native AWS resources.

If that were it for the announcements coming out of #TIBCONOW, it would be plenty. But TIBCO is on a roll, adding in an announcement of a new programme aimed at providing a collaborative space for TIBCO customers and partners to develop new solutions and to showcase new capabilities.

TIBCO Labs, as the programme is called, evaluates ideas for development as products to be released to customers/partners for further collaboration and is run by TIBCO’s Office of the CTO. For users keen to try out something new, TIBCO Labs provides a chance to safely dabble with emerging technologies, including blockchain, AI, and machine learning.

Along with the Labs announcement, several Labs projects were also show cased. These include:

Project Cloud Conversations: Empowering users to ask questions to gain insights from their data. Cloud Conversations is intended to help businesses develop new methods of exploring and interacting with their data.

Project Dovetail: Project Dovetail provides a GUI for modelling smart contracts, making them easier to write, visualise, test and audit, all without deep programming experience.

TIBCO Cloud My Partner App: With TIBCO Cloud My Partner App, businesses can improve collaboration with partners, speed up the resolution of requests, and streamline interactions, all of which should in theory foster faster and more effective decision-making.

TIBCO Cloud Risk Investigation App: TIBCO Cloud Risk Investigation App allows businesses to improve risk management, speed up the investigation of suspicious transactions, and strengthen collaboration across the enterprise.

These and other projects are live on the TIBCO Labs community website.

TIBCO also intriguingly announced they were making a play in the IoT space by forming a strategic alliance with Jabil, one of the largest electronics manufacturing services companies.

The strategic relationship is intended to deliver industrial IoT (IIoT) solutions using TIBCO’s Project Flogo framework and ecosystem. Jabil will develop embedded applications with machine learning capabilities and other IoT-enabled consumer products and industrial equipment.

The alliance will Leverage TIBCO Labs, to speed up the launch of IoT solutions. The combination promises to be a potent one, making use of Jabil’s scale (they currently have 100 facilities in 29 countries)and pairing it with TIBCO’s integration, analytics, and machine learning capabilities.

Meanwhile, that is just day one of the #TIBCONOW. The whirlwind continues…