ReadWriteWeb

We haven't written much about TIBCO's enterprise social media tool tibbr since a year ago. But they have interesting news, including updates to the service, that they are announcing today with v3.5, scheduled to be available next month.

One of the unanticipated problems of moving businesses' data centers and desktops into cloud-based deployments surrounds middleware, the class of software whose job is to enable better connections between users and their applications by way of messaging. For several years, enterprise application integration (EAI) has been a hot architectural trend, but the problem has come from a vast and growing array of differentiated messaging formats (including WebSphere MQ from IBM, Java Message Service from Oracle, and TIBCO Enterprise Message Service), all designed to integrate the way applications communicate with each other, but all of which now compete with one another for space on the fattening enterprise service bus (ESB).

Moving the ESB to the cloud is getting to be like cramming a live snake into a glove compartment. In an effort to radically simplify the process, BMC Software yesterday rolled out a wave of updates to its Middleware Management tools suite. The goal is to give IT managers a clearer view of the transactional pipeline between applications and clients, by way of middleware.

When I started professionally covering the enterprise 2.0/social business space just over a year ago it was all very exciting. I had personally witnessed how valuable a workplace microblog/activity stream could be, and I loved learning about all the different companies and the ideas floating around.

But it's easy to get bored. Despite all the talk about the consumerization of the enterprise, things still move slowly (heck, things don't really change that much day to day, week to week in the consumer space either). The same few problems seem to be discussed again and again: adoption, security, process, semantics etc. As Dennis Howlett recently wrote: "much of what we are hearing in the social space we've heard repeated for at least the last three years. In other words, precious little real progress."

So it's always nice to see some incremental progress, and this week brought at least two noteworthy product updates: one from Harmon.ie and one from tibbr. Each company was already doing something interesting, and each has taken its products to the next level.

"Yammer and Salesforce Chatter are gonna have some significant new competition starting Monday," Robert Scoble tweeted over the weekend. It turns out he was talking about Convofy, a new product from the Adobe and LMKR funded startup Scrybe.

In response to Scoble, Spigit VP of Product Hutch Carpenter tweeted: "Given incumbents, better have some 9x secret sauce or be a big vendor." I couldn't have said it better myself.

Well, Scrybe isn't a big vendor. So does it have some secret sauce?

TIBCO's enterprise 2.0 offering tibbr has been a long time in the making. We first covered it in Oct. 2009. It was finally released from beta today, and the reaction has been positive. It seems that TIBCO took its time and got the product right. It may be a bit late in the game, but Tibco has serious enterprise credibility and a solid product.

This, along with the announcement that Microsoft's OfficeTalk may be commercially released, reminds us that there is still room at the enterprise 2.0 table for products from established enterprise vendors.

Tibco has launched a business intelligence tool designed for the small business market that it is making available for free over the next year.

TibcoSilver Spotfire is part of Tibco's effort to appeal to a community that would not normally have access to its robust business intelligence technology. These are people who understand social technologies and may find the service appealing for what it can do that spreadsheets do not.

Recently, SAP showed us its new, cloud-based enterprise collaboration service called 12Sprints. It embraces consumer services and activity streams correlating to the context of the business use, in particular collaboration among teams and groups.

Since that demo a few weeks ago, our views about the SAP service have changed a bit. In particular now that Google Buzz is part of the picture and conversations we have had recently with companies like Jive Software.

It's evident that the landscape is changing. 12Sprints, Jive Software and a host of other enterprise services have solidified the belief that the enterprise expects applications to be social. Enterprise vendors are hearing that pretty clearly from their customers.

Tibco is coming out with a Twitter-like service that has an emphasis on subjects more than on following people.

In Tibco's view, the enterprise is not just about the people anymore, but the subject and contextual information that relates to a person's job. The value is in decoupling the subject matter from the person so the right information can be found quickly and easily.

Tibco is offering a real-time service called iProcess Spotfire that allows business users to manipulate data and produce reports from their business process management (BPM) software.

Tibco's do-it-yourself (DIY) service represents one of the promises of the real-time enterprise. The task of updating and fine tuning BPM software usually requires the help of IT personnel. It's reminiscent of how the web has made the most complex tasks fairly doable by people with little expertise. Tasks that once required experts now can be performed by people with few technical skills.

The ReadWrite Real-Time Web Summit is fast approaching! We hope you'll register to join us at this exciting day-long event filled with participatory conversations among the leading innovators in real-time technology, media and financial services.

If you can't make it to Mountain View, California in eight days, get ready to watch selected sessions streamed live online (thanks to Justin.tv). This isn't going to be talking-heads pushing their products on stage, this is going to be a high-value brainstorming, networking and collaborative learning. Check out the companies below; they are bringing financial support to this important gathering to talk together about the future of the internet.