Microsoft integration adds more AI to Tibco analytics suite
Tibco continues to invest in augmented intelligence and machine learning capabilities, recently adding an integration with Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services aimed at developers.
Tibco continues to add to the augmented intelligence capabilities of its analytics platform, most recently revealing that Tibco Spotfire and Tibco Data Science now support Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services.
Azure Cognitive Services is a system from Microsoft that enables application developers to embed AI and machine learning capabilities. Spotfire, meanwhile, is Tibco's chief business intelligence tool for data visualizations and Data Science is a BI tool focused less on visualization and more on hard core data analysis, and the two can be used together or independently of one another.
Tibco, founded in 1997 and based in Palo Alto, Calif., is adding support for Azure Cognitive Services following other AI investments in its analytics platform. In January 2020, the vendor added to the natural language generation capabilities of Spotfire via an integration with Arria NLG Studio for BI, and in the fall of 2019 it unveiled new products and added to existing ones with the credo of AI everywhere.
Meanwhile, the vendor's addition of native support for Azure Cognitive Services, revealed June 2, comes after Tibco expanded the multi-cloud capabilities of its analytics platform through an integration with Microsoft Azure late in 2019; it already had an integration with Amazon Web Services and supports Google Cloud, among other cloud service providers.
"We don't believe that AI is a marketing tool or a marketing term," said Matt Quinn, Tibco's COO. "We see that AI can actually be used as foundational element in people's systems, and so working with Microsoft, doing this integration, is all about us being able to use our own technology, inside of our own products, as a foundational layer."
An organization's data is displayed on a sample Tibco dashboard.
"With Spotfire, AI is definitely where they should be," he said. "AI, machine learning and data science is where they're great. They're geared to sophisticated users, and if you're doing a deeper dive, doing serious visualizations, Tibco is a way you want to go."
Beyond simply adding a new integration, Tibco's move to enable application developers to embed AI and machine learning capabilities by using Azure Cognitive Services continues the vendor's process of expanding its analytics platform.
While some longtime BI vendors have struggled to maintain an innovative platform, Tibco, after losing some momentum in the early 2000s, has been able to remain among the top vendors with a suite of BI tools that are considered innovative.
We see that AI can actually be used as foundational element in people's systems, and so working with Microsoft, doing this integration, is all about us being able to use our own technology, inside of our own products, as a foundational layer.
Matt QuinnCOO, Tibco
Tibco's platform is entirely cloud-based, which allows Tibco to deliver new and upgraded features without having to roll out a major update each time, and its partnership strategy gives it the ability to embed products such as Azure Cognitive Services and Arria NLG Studio for BI without having to develop them in-house.
"Tibco has really evolved into a much more partner-centric company," Quinn said. "We realize we are part of a broader ecosystem of tools and technologies, and so these partnerships that we've created are pretty special and pretty important, and we've been really happy with the bidirectional of those, especially the relationship with Microsoft. It's clear that they have evolved as we have evolved."
As far as motivation for the addition of Azure Cognitive Services to the Tibco analytics platform, Quinn said it's simply about making data scientists more productive.
Customers, he added, were asking for the integration, while Tibco had a preexisting relationship with Microsoft that made adding Azure Cognitive Services a natural fit.
"Data scientists use all sorts of tools from all different walks of life, and because of our integration heritage we're really good at integrating those types of things, so what we're doing is we're opening up the universe of all the Microsoft pieces to this data science group that just wants to be more productive," Quinn said. "It enhances the richness of the platform."
Tibco's acquisitions in recent years, such as its 2018 purchase of Scribe Software and its 2019 purchase of SnappyData, helped advance the capabilities of Tibco's analytics platform, and now integrations are giving it further powers.
"They're doing some excellent things," Sherman said. "They're aiming at deeper analytics, digging deeper into data science and data engineering, and this move to get their analytics closer to their data science makes a heck of a lot of sense."
In the coming months, Quinn said that Tibco plans to continue adding integrations in order to add to the capabilities of its analytics platform. In addition, ease of use will be a significant focus for the vendor.
Meanwhile, ModelOps -- the lifecycle of model development -- will be a new area of emphasis for Tibco.
"ModelOps is really the set of things you have to do to take a model, whether it's AI or just plain data science, and move it into the real world, and then how do you change it, how do you evolve it, who needs to sign off on it," Quinn said. "For Tibco it's great because it really brings together the data science piece with the hardcore engineering stuff that people have known us for."
