Cisco and Tibco join forces to deliver real-time, intelligent network services and reduce Internet congestion

PQ BIT, a division of the PQ Africa group and sole distributor of Tibco Software locally, today announced that Tibco Software has expanded its partnership with Cisco Systems, the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, to encompass Cisco`s entire product line. Cisco Systems, which owns a minority stake in Tibco Software, a leader in real-time e-business infrastructure software, has licensed Tibco`s software to be embedded in its networking products.

"The use of Tibco`s `plumbing` software in Cisco hardware and software will bring a new level of `intelligence` to the Internet, allowing telecommunications service providers to more rapidly and cost-effectively deliver a range of New World services," says Wolfgang M"uller, managing director at PQ BIT. "This will enable everyday Internet users to find and receive highly personalised data, voice and video faster and more reliably than ever before."

In a related announcement, Tibco Software said it plans to make its version of Pragmatic General Multicast (PGM), a new generation of networking software it jointly designed with Cisco, available as open source. Software programmers and content providers are thus able to modify and use PGM freely to develop multicast software applications. PGM, which has the potential to reduce network traffic by more than 50 percent, reliably broadcasts information over the Internet, enabling a single message, issued just once by a server or publisher, to make its way through the `plumbing` of the network to thousands of users. Conventional network software requires the server to send a copy of the same message to thousands of users.

"As the Internet reshapes the global telecommunications industry, service providers recognise the importance of adopting New World services that seamlessly integrate data, voice and video," said Don Listwin, executive vice president Cisco Systems. "Our strategic partnership with Tibco Software will help Service Providers to rapidly develop and deploy New World products and services that allow consumers to prosper from the Internet economy."

Intelligent Network Services for Service Providers Tibco`s infrastructure software combined with Cisco`s Internetworking Operating System (IOS) software enables real-time, intelligent network management and services. Together, these technologies are expected to help telecommunications service providers rapidly deploy new services and generate new revenues.

With Tibco`s software as part of the network, Service Providers will now have a `smart` network that can automatically reconfigure itself in real-time based on changing network conditions and customer needs. Before, if a network administrator wanted to change the quality of service of a network segment - for a video conference, for example - he would have to logon and manually change settings. With Tibco software, real-time updates of network conditions and requirements will be continuously transmitted and the network will be able to reconfigure itself automatically and instantly. Likewise, consumers will be able to subscribe to new services, such as high-speed Digital Subscriber Line (DSL), and be provisioned in real-time, instead of the days or weeks it currently takes to turn on such services to businesses and homes.

"The winners in the Internet Economy will be those companies that operate highly efficient and personalised information networks," continues M"uller.

Internet Infrastructure: Creating a `Smart` Network and Easing Traffic Congestion Tibco`s real-time infrastructure software offers a complete, end-to-end Internet and enterprise infrastructure that successfully scales to the most demanding business information needs. It provides a real-time e-business integration platform that encompasses data integration and transformation, business process coordination, messaging, enterprise portals and alerting, adapters for legacy, packaged and third-party applications, plus enterprise monitoring and management.

Fundamental to Tibco`s infrastructure software is a communications mechanism known as publish/subscribe. Today`s information flow on the Internet is relatively inefficient because it uses a communications model known as request/reply. In the request/reply model, a software application must explicitly ask a specific server or web site for information. Continuous updates require many repeated requests to determine if content has changed. Each request must receive a separate and distinct response, which creates unnecessary duplication and wastes compute cycles on the server. As more and more users make requests, the result is significant delays and network congestion. The publish and subscribe model significantly eases the traffic problem. Publish and subscribe allows information to be distributed as it becomes available. Subscribers receive the content in which they`ve registered an interest, without specifically connecting to a site or an application.