Tibco Software Inc. has introduced an upgrade to its EAI software that officials said will help companies better model business processes, integrate the latest applications with mainframes and tap emerging technologies such as Web services.
ActiveEnterprise 4.0 provides a breadth of integration capabilities through support for Java 2 Enterprise Edition, XML (Extensible Markup Language), Web services and Java messaging. Also, the enterprise application integration software delivers metadata in an XML schema.
AE 4, available now, offers easier deployment capabilities through two new tools. Tibco Designer Environment provides a common view of integrated systems, and Business Process Management Designer provides a unified view of business process management so users can orchestrate business processes across one platform. This second tool facilitates drag-and-drop mapping of workflow, automated tasks and exception handling to allow users to map and model business processes while interacting with underlying systems.
The upgrade also offers support for integrating mainframes through Tibco Substation ES, which acts as an assistant to the mainframe operating system by sitting under it and listening to and publishing events.
Tibco, of Palo Alto, Calif., gets its hooks into Web services with AE 4, but officials said they will announce a major Web services tool in two months.
Paris-based Société Générale, a large European bank, looks to AE 4 to solve two business problems: a lack of deep business process management and developers writing low-level code. The upgraded application will be particularly useful as the bank deploys new applications that have to plug in to its existing architecture, said Sylvain Pendaries, director of Capital Markets IT at Société Générale. “With Tibco … we should be aware of any problems by the end of the day,” said Pendaries, in New York. “By adding the [integration] process, we are [monitoring trade] on a near-time basis.”