Tibco Software, best known for its messaging and connectivity middleware products, Monday debuted a social computing application that will put the company in direct competition with Salesforce.com Chatter, Yammer and other enterprise social network tools.
Tibco said its new Tibbr software, generally available Monday, provides a way for a company's employees, customers and partners to interact with each other and with information and events generated by their IT systems.
Tibbr allows users to organize information according to subject or topic, and create, contribute and subscribe to event streams. The system links key applications and business processes to provide users with "contextually relevant information," the company said, in contrast to other social networking tools that focus on people. That allows employees to be alerted, say, when a key order has shipped or a contract signed.
The new system also allows users to pull feeds from external systems such as Facebook, Google Alerts and LinkedIn. The software also supports interfaces for mobile devices such Apple's iPad and iPhone, Android-based devices and BlackBerry devices.
