The announcement today that Cisco has taken a minority equity stake in TIBCO Software,Inc., the leading provider of publish/subscribe software and a 10-year veteran of pushtechnologies, is expected to result in new standards for "pushing" customized information overcomputer networks to users' desktops.
For the first time, customers using TIBCO'spublish/subscribe and multicasting software with networking devices running Cisco IOS software,will be able to deploy large-scale, reliable multicast "push" applications over theInternet/Intranets.
TIBCO's patented publish/subscribe and reliable multicast technologiesprovide a platform for efficient, large-scale information or content distribution over privatenetworks or the Internet. These technologies allow a single message to make its way through the"plumbing" of the network to thousands of users or subscribers, rather than sending the samemessage thousands of times to thousands of users. Use of these technologies can reduce networktraffic by 50 percent or more.
Cisco and TIBCO's joint development work will result in the following:- Reliable multicast protocol for the Cisco IOS software and the desktop.
This new protocol will enable reliable multicast information distribution for the Internet, intranets and extranets, supporting potentially millions of users. TIBCO and Cisco plan to submit thisjointly developed protocol to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as an open referencespecification.
- Content-based filtering inside the network.
This work will embed TIBCO's patented subject-based addressing scheme as a feature of Cisco IOS software. Network users will be ableto subscribe to published data by topic; content-based filtering inside the network level willenable users to receive only information to which they have subscribed: The filtering stops theinformation from reaching points where there are no interested subscribers, providingfiner-grained information delivery thereby significantly reducing network traffic.
Availability
Products incorporating the new reliable multicast and content-based filteringstandards are scheduled to be available in early 1998. Pricing and distribution will beannounced upon availability.
Setting the Standard for Push
During the past six months, dozens of companies have announcedalliances with TIBCO and plans to support or embed the TIBCO technologies into their ownproducts. In addition to Cisco, the companies that have announced strategic alliances withTIBCO including: IBM, Oracle, Informix, 3Com, BackWeb, Diffusion, inCommon, Verisign andCybercash.
TIBCO Products
TIBCO develops and markets a full range of tools and applications based on itsTIB® (The Information Bus®) technology. A highly sophisticated program-to-program interface andcommunications platform, TIB technology enables applications to publish information, such asstock prices or competitive data, to other applications which subscribe to the information. Utilizing TIBCO's Subject-Based Addressing®, TIB technology directs messages to theirdestinations over local networks or the Internet, so that application processes can communicatewithout details of network addresses or connections.
TIBCO's products use TIB technology toprovide organizations with a proven middleware infrastructure for handling complex, distributedmessaging efficiently and reliably. TIBCO's core middleware products include EnterpriseToolkitTM, a suite of enterprise-class, object-oriented middleware tools for building andmodeling flexible, integrated communications-enabled distributed applications, andTIB/Rendezvous, an API toolkit that allows C, C++ and Java programmers to quickly develop anddeploy distributed applications with robust messaging capabilities.
About TIBCO
TIBCO Software sells distributed systems to the commercial marketplace includingmanufacturing and telecommunications businesses. TIBCO Software, Inc. markets the widelyaccepted TIBCO publish/subscribe middleware products. TIBCO Software was formed on January 1,1997 from TIBCO Inc. (previously named Teknekron Systems Inc.), a leading software company thatfirst became prominent in supplying information management systems in financial trading rooms. TIBCO was acquired by Reuters in 1994 and has pioneered use of publish-subscribe technologiesin finance and other industries. Reuters Holdings PLC (NASDAQ: RTRSY) is the world's largestnews and financial information services group. Information about Reuters is available athttp://www.reuters.com. More information about TIBCO Software is available athttp://www.tibco.com.
TIBnet, TIB/Rendezvous, Enterprise Toolkit and Subject-Based Addressing are trademarks of TIBCOInc. Information Bus and TIB are registered trademarks of TIBCO Inc. Other brand or productnames may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
REUTERS andsphere logos are the house trademarks of REUTERS Limited. REUTERS is a registered trademark inmore than 25 countries worldwide.
Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) is theworldwide leader in networking for the Internet. News and information are available athttp://www.cisco.com.
Cisco IOS is a trademark, and Cisco, Cisco Systems, and the Cisco Systems logo areregistered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. in the U.S. and certain other countries. All othertrademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.
