Jaspersoft embeds BI in Tibco

Business Intelligence used to be, not so very long ago, a specialised corner of IT utilisation, with dedicated – and not inexpensive – applications used by specialist business analysts. The advent of the cloud has changed much of that however. Now, there is a growing realisation the BI tools can and should be used in a wide range of applications areas that stretch far beyond the classic analysis of trends extracted from monthly business figures.

That has not only driven a significant change in the development of BI tools, but also in the level of interest in their capabilities from other vendors.

The change is that companies like Jaspersoft have redefined BI tools as embeddable services that can be incorporated directly into other applications. Not only that, they are now written as open source applications, which allows all interested parties to contribute ideas and even code as to what the applications should do.

The interest from other vendors, particularly in Jaspersoft’s case, has just become palpable in that the company has just been acquired by Tibco Software for a total consideration of $185 million.

Though this move arguably takes Jaspersoft off the roster for some applications developers, it is easy to see how it might put Tibco onto the `contenders’ lists of many end user businesses. Jaspersoft's embedded business intelligence suite allows application developers to embed highly interactive reports, dashboards and analytics into their applications. This could fit well as a contributor to Tibco’s Spotfire data discovery and interactive analytics tools.

This already has a place in the advanced segments of the analytics market, and the acquisition accelerates the company’s expansion into embedded business intelligence and reporting, giving it a broad portfolio with which to address the two fastest growing segments of the business intelligence market.

Consumption of business intelligence and analytics tools has increased dramatically in recent years, driven by demand from the business-led sectors of data discovery and application-centric embedded analytics. Jaspersoft is a market leader in the embedded analytics market for enterprise and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications.

It  also complements the TIBCO Spotfire go-to-market approach through the use of a commercial open source business model. The current Jaspersoft management team and employees will join Tibco and continue to pursue the Jaspersoft commercial open source strategy, product roadmap and low cost, subscription-pricing approach.

"Tibco's broader business strategy is to continue to expand our go-to-market model with a wider range of pricing, packaging and deployment options. The acquisition of Jaspersoft accelerates this strategy as it brings a subscription pricing approach for its commercial products along with a set of open source offerings," said Murray Rode, chief operating officer, Tibco. "We believe that the combination of our companies' offerings will allow us to cover the whole of the market opportunity for analytics while providing tremendous value to the combined set of customers and prospects.

"We live in an era of multiple IT consumption models, from cloud to on-premise to hybrid applications. The Jaspersoft utility cloud service is a perfect complement to our existing SaaS BI Service, Spotfire Cloud. This acquisition continues our focus on delivering the most comprehensive set of analytical solutions for where, when and how the user wants insight," said Matt Quinn, Tibco’s chief technology officer.

Jaspersoft's open source business intelligence software has nearly 16 million product downloads worldwide, more than 140,000 production deployments of its software and 2,000 commercial customers in 100 countries. A development community of more than 400,000 registered members regularly participates in Jaspersoft's open source BI projects.

"We are excited about this opportunity to join forces with a market leader in Tibco," said Brian Gentile, chief executive officer, Jaspersoft. "The company has a vision of providing the right information, at the right time, in the right context to deliver a competitive advantage for customers. The continuation of Jaspersoft's open source mission, business model, technology, market presence, and brand – now as part of Tibco – will allow us to deliver an even better business analytics toolset for the largest customer audience."