Event
Summary
Tibco Software Inc. (NASDAQ: TIBX), a provider of real-time infrastructure
software for e-business, today announced it has delivered open source
code for its Pragmatic General Multicast (PGM) networking software
to software developers and content providers. PGM software ensures reliable
simultaneous delivery of messages to many locations over the Internet
or on a corporate network. With PGM, the author of the broadcast is guaranteed
that all data is delivered to the intended receivers, or is informed of
any unrecoverable data packet loss. Through the open source program, developers
can download the PGM software for free through a GNU Public License (GPL),
modify it and develop software applications that combine data, voice and
video.
The
PGM protocol was co-designed by Tibco and Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:
CSCO) and has been submitted to Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF),
the organization responsible for setting Internet architecture standards.
PGM software is a reliable multicast transport protocol for applications
that require delivery from multiple sources to multiple recipients. PGM
ensures delivery of messages to all intended recipients, provides a high-level
of online security, and reduces network traffic by sending a message just
once from a server or publisher. Conventional network software requires
the server to send a copy of the same message to each user on a point-to-point
basis - slowing delivery and making it less reliable.
Market
Impact
The
improvements provided by Tibco and Cisco will be quickly embraced by the
market. Point-to-Point delivery methods (sending the message once for
each user on the distribution list) are hard on network bandwidth, and
it is more difficult for network administrators to track the successful
delivery of each message. This development should be especially useful
in products which use the Publish/Subscribe model of messaging, where
the server(s) may potentially have to deliver the same piece of information
to hundreds or thousands of clients.
Tibco
is one of the leaders in the Enterprise Application Integration market,
and this development, coupled with the fact they are publishing PGM as
open-source, should increase their visibility even further.
User
Recommendations
Companies considering the use of a publish/subscribe model, or indeed
any push technology which requires one-to-many distribution of messages,
should look at PGM. Even if the company is not using Tibco integration
products, the fact that the program is open source should allow them to
integrate PGM with whatever applications are currently in place.
Glossary
Multicast:
To transmit a message to multiple recipients at the same time. Multicast
is a one-to-many transmission similar to broadcasting, except that multicasting
implies sending to a list of specific users, whereas broadcasting implies
sending to everybody.