Tibco Tibbr Gives Social Networks A Business Context

Tibco has launched its business social networking tool Tibbr. At the San Francisco launch, Tibco CEO Vivek Ranadivé  told eWEEK Europe that he believes the subject-based communications environment will be the first virally-spreading enterprise application. He said that it is already spreading by popular subscription within enterprises in the same way that Facebook has become dominant as a traditional social networking application.

Rather than being person-centric like Facebook or MySpace, Tibbr is focused on subjects related to the enterprise. These may be general topics such as the marketing department or finer grained issues within that department. Events can be flagged to allow workflows to be loosely or tightly organised.

For example, a worker may be handling a query about an order. Within Tibbr, the worker can find out the current status of the order and instantly contact anyone involved in the processing stream to get precise details. Even if the order has shipped, the integration of tracking tools supplied by transportation firms like UPS and FedEx can instantly show the current location of the order.

In addition to this, projects can be planned, issues discussed on a broader scale. As was pointed out at the launch, it allows “the left hand to know what the right hand is doing, even when the right hand doesn’t know the left hand is there”. In short, the fact that projects can be discussed within a more open-access environment allows people who may not be directly involved with, but may be affected by, a corporate initiative can voice their concerns and suggestions to improve the development process.

A subject-based approach

Ranadivé said that he feels the subject-based approach puts Tibbr two years ahead of the competition – and the system is patented to reinforce this lead, he added.

Enterprise staff can be brought onto the network using their Active Directory or LDAP open directory information and privileges. They can then subscribe to subjects which may be broad terms like “marketing” or specific projects within and between departments. In fact, unless specifically excluded or prevented by a corporate security policy, anyone can enrol in and contribute to any subject, unless there are specific exceptions made for security reasons.

Rather than replace Facebook and other social networking tools that are invading corporate networks, Tibbr embraces them. Bidirectional links can be made with Facebook and Twitter so that users may interact as normal without the corporate connections becoming entangled with the social connections.

Tibbr is also a self-serving tool for Tibco. The company is well-known by back-office staff because of the its established business of providing middleware connectors for applications and databases. Tibbr pulls on this experience and library of accumulated tools to allow data to be incorporated into Tibbr and worked on.

Bringing context to content

Ranadivé (left) explained that access to content was considered important in the 20th Century but that this was changing because Tibbr “brings context to content. Context is king in the 21st Century.”

This was exemplified by Aldo Manzini, executive vice president and chief administration officer of MGM Resorts International, a firm that manages many casinos worldwide. He said that the challenge he faces is the “deluge of information” that results from the detailed information supplied by the firm’s loyalty programme. He said that Tibbr helps to contextualise this flow of data so that staff can act on the latest information coming into the system from many sources, to enable the customer to be proactively assisted or offered promotions while they are visiting any of the company’s worldwide facilities.

At the eWEEK Europe interview, Ranadivé said the MGM Resorts experience showed the viral nature of Tibbr. “Initially, the company licensed 200 people but just one day later it increased this from 200 to 15,000 because it was already obvious the system was taking off,” he explained.

Ram Menon, Tibco’s chief marketing officer, said, “We wanted to marry the best of social networking software with the things the enterprise cares about: [the links between] data, apps and people.”

At the moment, Tibbr has connectors primarily for applications from SAP, Oracle, Salesforce.com and Microsoft. This allows bidirectional interaction with Tibbr and gives it the “ability to get info in a granular manner”, Menon explained.

Traditional social networking tools and other feeds can be connected to the Tibbr interface. Apart from Facebook and Twitter, Linked-in and other services, such as Flickr or blogs, can all be displayed and used through the same desktop display.

Ranadivé said that it was essential that Tibbr could be accessed from any device and to this end apps are available for Blackberry, iPhone, iPad and Android devices.

The company said that the business social networking tool can be used by any size of company. Depending on the size of the implementation, it works out at around $12 per user each month.