TIBCO Analytics - One Year Later

The past twelve months have been a wild ride in the world of business intelligence and big data, full of acquisitions (including Jaspersoft’s addition to the TIBCO Software family) and innovations. Since forming TIBCO Analytics, we’ve entered an extraordinarily important time for the business and all those customers who’ve placed their trust in us as their partner for data analysis and reporting.   Because of this trust placed in us, and the innovative tools at our disposal as part of TIBCO Software, we have a unique opportunity to deliver best-in-class value with each of our tools.

TIBCO Analytics brings together two market-leading platforms:  TIBCO Spotfire, the award-winning platform for data discovery, analysis and visualization, and TIBCO Jaspersoft, the award-winning platform for embeddable reporting and analysis.  These two platforms solve very different analytics problems and for different types of customers.  Even the very fundamental aspects of these two platforms and the uses for which they are best suited are complementary, which becomes a growing point of emphasis as we aim to deliver increased value for our customers with each product release.

Through the combination of these products and formation of a business unit focused exclusively on Analytics, we have become one of the largest business intelligence tool providers in the industry, and boast one of the largest customer bases as well.  Our significant level of investment in Analytics allows us to solve some of the most important, new analytics problems facing our customers.

We’ll solve these problems through the continued improvement and innovation of both primary platforms (Spotfire and Jaspersoft), and we’ll do so in ways that leverage the strengths of one platform to help the other become more powerful in solving the needs of its core customer.  In other words, we’ll use Jaspersoft-centric features and techniques to help make Spotfire an even more capable data discovery and visualization tool, thereby affordably reaching the broadest possible audience of users, driving greater value in a customer’s investment.

In addition, we’ll use Spotfire-centric features and techniques to help make Jaspersoft an even more capable embedded reporting and analysis tool, enabling more powerful and visual use of data, which also drives greater value in a customer’s investment.

Our longer-term strategy for our Analytics platforms centers on cloud architecture and cloud-based delivery.  Our aim is to literally re-imagine business analytics – the way it is designed, developed, delivered, deployed and consumed – to create a seamless spectrum of web-based analytic services, which can enable anyone to have a personalized or tailored experience that is perfectly fit-for-purpose. It’s an exciting vision and, when we discuss this directly and in more detail with our customers, it never fails to capture their excitement as well.

I look forward to this TIBCO Analytics team describing this vision in more detail for you and then gaining your feedback and engagement so you might join us on this amazing step in the journey toward next-generation data analytics.

The Journey Continues: Reaching Everyone with Analytics. Now as TIBCO Jaspersoft

2014 was an eventful year for Jaspersoft. We launched two new versions of our flagship product, JasperReports Server: v5.6 and v6, both full of clever innovations. We reached new records for total number of customers, product downloads, and registered community members. Oh yeah, and we were acquired by TIBCO Software at the end of April.

Now that Jaspersoft is part of the TIBCO Analytics family of products, a few things change, but most things stay the same. I’m excited that Jaspersoft is now part of a bigger company with complementary Analytics tools, which will allow it to solve more customer problems in more areas of the globe. I’m also thankful that we’ll continue all that has made Jaspersoft's business intelligence solitions great: focus on innovation, commitment to solving embeddable analytics projects, being a great provider of open source software and member of the Open Source community, and always putting the interests of customers and community first.

What’s Changed, Now That Jaspersoft is Part of TIBCO?

Jaspersoft products are now part of a bigger, more comprehensive set of Analytics offerings which will allow it to ultimately solve a broader set of a customer’s analytics needs.  Within TIBCO Analytics, the Jaspersoft product line now sits next to TIBCO Spotfire, the market-leading data discovery, analysis and visualization tool that has been part of TIBCO since 2007.  These two tools (Jaspersoft and Spotfire) are extremely complementary, so you can expect, over time, one tool to help the other be even stronger in its primary category (Jaspersoft in embedded reporting and analytics and Spotfire in data discovery and visualization).

Jaspersoft personnel are now part of a bigger, more global infrastructure and workforce that will allow it to scale more easily and serve customers more fully.  Because of Jaspersoft’s commercial open source roots, its customers are all over the globe.  Now, as part of a much larger enterprise focused exclusively on mission-critical business software, the Jaspersoft team will be able to more efficiently work with customers wherever they are and satisfy a broader range of projects and needs than we would have as an independent company.  I am hopeful that, like me, our customers see this as a powerful next step for Jaspersoft.

What Stays the Same, Now That Jaspersoft is Part of TIBCO?

All the things about Jaspersoft that matter most to customers should remain the same: 

• Our relentless focus on innovation, which propels us to create the most affordable reporting and analytics solutions to solve the next decade’s analytics problems; 
• Our leadership in embedded reporting and analytics, which allows Jaspersoft tools and the insight they provide to become a contextually-relevant part of thousands of other pieces of software, helping millions of users each day to become more capably analytic;
• Our being a great Open Source software provider, community member, and participant;
• Our never-ending drive to build an efficient and successful operating model, which ensures our customers receive the greatest value in licensing and using our software;
• Our laser focus on customer success, our highest priority goal, along with our recognizing that we succeed only when our customers’ succeed; and
• Our constant quest to reach everyone with analytics; that is, our understanding that analytics must become a thing that you do, not a place that you go.

As we journey forward into 2015, I hope that you, our customers and partners, will let me know how we are doing against this list of things that will and won’t change.  My responsibility is to ensure that a broader, deeper and, ultimately, even more successful relationship emerges between our customers and TIBCO Analytics, of which Jaspersoft is a critical part.  As always, my email inbox is open and I’d like to hear from you.

Thank you for your business and partnership.  Best wishes in 2015.

Brian Gentile

Former Chairman & CEO, Jaspersoft

Now Sr. Vice President & General Manager, TIBCO Analytics

email: bgentile@tibco.com