TIBCO Finally Jumps onto the Cloud Bus

Longtime Software as a Service (SaaS) holdout TIBCO is now taking its enterprise application integration middleware online with the launch this week of a SaaS-based version of app connectors.

The company describes the TIBCO Cloud Bus as a subscription-based Integration Platform as a Service (IPaaS) offering based on its premise-based TIBCO BusinessWorks middleware, which is used by some of the largest enterprises to connect disparate applications (premise- and cloud-based) from vendors ranging from Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce.com, SAP and hundreds of various players.

TIBCO is viewed as the largest independent provider of application integration middleware and competes with the likes of IBM (WebSphere and Cast Iron), Microsoft (BizTalk) and Oracle (Fusion). Customers typically spend hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars for perpetual licenses of TIBCO's middleware.

With the launch of TIBCO Cloud Bus, customers can start out paying as little as $5,000 per month for one environment and four connectors. Additional connectors cost $1,500 per month or $4,000 in packages of four. Those wanting 24x7 premium support with immediate response pay an additional 20 percent on top of license fees. The company is offering its subscription model as a cloud service, as well as within customer datacenters.

TIBCO clearly has entered the IPaaS game late. There are a number of players of all sizes, including Dell, which three years ago acquired Boomi, Appresso, Informatica, MuleSoft, SnapLogic and the above-mentioned heavyweights.

Asked what took it so long, Steve Leung, TIBCO Cloud Bus product manager, said:  "A lot of the players are not profitable. We knew this was a requirement but we needed to make the right business decision when jumping into this market and not lose money on it. We've seen an uptick with the growth of Salesforce.com. Customers are actually shifting their thinking and moving things to the cloud."

Leung deserves kudos for his candor but it might be a stretch to say none of those players were profitable. Perhaps TIBCO was enjoying the profits of its old traditional license model a bit longer than others? "Our key value is we offer real-time integration by default," he said, while most others offer "file-based batch processes."

TIBCO is offering free trials of the new Cloud Bus here.

Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 05/22/2013 at 12:49 PM