Our Spotfire team has been at it again. You’ll remember they had a cool Christmas gift selector in December. Now they’ve got an even cooler Super Bowl analyzer that takes you deep into not only the Patriots and Giants but into historical data as well.

Whether you are a diehard fan of either team, a casual observer–or someone who would rather talk about the UEFA cup or test cricket–this demo should hold your interest in its use of Business Intelligence to deliver a real-world solution. There is no halftime show, no wardrobe malfunctions, no sock puppets, and no cavemen–just something fun that you can share with your colleagues.

Check it out! http://spotfire.tibco.com/testdrive/

BEST HOLIDAY WISHES–AND A LITTLE HELP FOR YOUR LAST-MINUTE SHOPPING

First of all, let me offer warmest holiday greetings to all of our friends around the world. This is a time of the year when we can assess what we’ve done well with our business over the past 12 months, what we could improve upon, and how we can go roaring into 2008 with a full head of steam.

That said, I realize that some of you may still be struggling with some last-minute shopping panic.

So I’d like to offer you a link to a very creative–and helpful, I think–little animation and tool that will guide you to gifts of many types in a wide range of prices.

This tool is meant to be fun, but it also offers an excellent demonstration of some of the capabilities of the Spotfire technology that TIBCO acquired in 2007. (Yes, I have to keep selling even during the holidays! But check it out, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.)

http://spotfire.tibco.com/holidays/

Best Wishes for the New Year!

The Enterprise Service Bus has been an integral component of TIBCO’s approach to software from the beginning. After all, the company’s name is shorthand for “The Information Bus Company.”

TIBCO’s CEO and Chairman Vivek Ranadivé got straight to the heart of the matter in a recent interview, when he spoke about the necessity for a real-time “nervous system” at the center of enterprise IT. As Vivek explains further, you start to add muscles to this system with Business Process Management (BPM) as you develop your new, flexible SOA and get up to real-time, even predictive, speed in whatever competitive market you find yourself in.

ESB serves as the digital nervous system that Vivek outlines. And now it looks like the ESB approach is gaining traction beyond its well-established high-end base.

As Joe McKendrick recently put it, “ESBs have typically had more in common with limousines than mass-transit vehicles, (but now) are increasingly moving into the mid-market space.” Joe, in turn, based his observation on a recent Information Week article by Andy Dornan, which identifies ESB as one of four key SOA technologies (the others being governance, runtime management, and security gateways) in the author’s look at the future of SOA.

It’s easy enough to find innumerable abstruse debates about ESB: what it is, what it does, what it should do, whether it’s a gateway or part-and-parcel of SOAs, etc. I find these debates to be interesting and generally useful, but not very productive unless they focus on the key reasons to place the ESB in the center of enterprise IT: getting your company off its addiction to a database-oriented architecture (DOA), and liberating your processes and services into an architecture that is efficient, flexible, and can function in at least real-time.

I also agree with Joe–ESB is a mass-transit vehicle for mid-size companies as well as the Global 1000. Flexibility and agility should be available to anyone who needs it. With TIBCO, they are. Our continued leadership in developing ESB as a key enabler in the fast-growing world of SOAs encompasses a “big tent” approach in helping you move from DOA to SOA.

As TIBCO expands operations worldwide, we’re committed to approaching our growth as an organization with a truly global point of view. In contrast to the typical Silicon Valley-based company “with operations” in certain countries or regions, our approach requires a more nuanced understanding of the local market’s unique characteristics and needs.

Let me explain why I think this is a significant distinction.

Cultivating an integrated, indigenous workforce is an imperative for economic success in any developing society. When TIBCO expands into a new market, we work hard to build a local team, provide the necessary training and skills set development, and, in general, participate and contribute as a good citizen of each and every country in which we operate.

So in South Africa, we’re following the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) program. Created to redress inequalities by giving disadvantaged groups economic opportunities previously not available to them, the BEE program includes measures such as employment equity, skills development, ownership, management and corporate social investment. In support of this, TIBCO has expanded our Software Skills Academy to South Africa, where we maintain offices in Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban.
Beginning with basic training in our South African offices, academy enrollees then continue with a phase of higher-level training during a three-month stay at TIBCO’s R&D facility in the United Kingdom.

Recently, I had an opportunity to speak with one of our South African Software Skills Academy graduates, a woman named Rasia Mahomed, about her experience. After obtaining a degree in Human Resources, Rasia worked at the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) during an internship. With very limited exposure to IT and an educational background in HR, Rasia jumped into the TIBCO Software Skills Academy training program head first. She completed all the practical and theoretical coursework on TIBCO’s products and solutions quickly, graduating in just three months’ time. Today, she works closely with TIBCO engineers, serving customers throughout South Africa.

At TIBCO, we believe grassroots efforts such as the Software Skills Academy help to distinguish the company by engendering a longer term positive impact than the norm on the emerging markets in which we’re involved. TIBCO is not as large as your typical multi-national organization in terms of revenue or number of employees just yet. But we are determined to be a global leader in making a difference. When it comes to corporate social responsibility, we believe it’s never too early to act.

Well, I realize it’s been some time since my last post. This unintentional hiatus was brought on by a triad of nearly unstoppable forces:

(1) feverishly paced work on the go-to-market plans for our next series of SOA products, slated for launch later this year;
(2) TUCON, TIBCO’s User Conference held earlier this summer (a huge success, by the way); and
(3) a demanding 6-year old at home on summer break, which can often collide with your daily schedule. Now I’m able to come up for air and share some exciting news with you.

This news, of course, is “about IT-everyman” – known quite simply as “Greg the Architect.” The concept behind Greg the Architect began as a fun, interesting experiment to try and capture the frustration the average Joe or Jane in IT experiences every day when it comes to SOA. We obviously struck a chord because the response has been tremendous, reverberating across the blogosphere and traditional media. Here’s the most recent installment in the series:

At the 2007 Stevie Awards, Greg the Architect won a Stevie, beating out more sophisticated multi-million dollar creations from folks like Wyndham Hotels. What a pleasant, unexpected surprise for my marketing team to receive public accolades for a “fun at work” creative side project. Greg has strong opinions on the technology landscape. Lookout for Greg on the web, even at you next IT conference…