Document Extract
We’re told that nothing is certain in life except perhaps for death and taxes. Well for TIBCO Software, long-time financial services messaging tax levier, we’re hearing rumours of a death in the family and on top of that another family member is not in the rudest of health either. SmartSockets, the low-latency messaging solution that TIBCO snapped up via the Talarian acquisition in 2002, is getting less and less attention as the years go by. Talking to messaging software users and vendors it appears that TIBCO feels that SmartSockets’ best years are behind it – except from a maintenance revenue perspective of course. This is giving fans of SmartSockets, and there are still many of them, who rely on the software to connect applications in a low latency world, a reason to look at other solutions. On top of this, TIBCO appears to have thrown in the towel in the low-latency messaging “in software” arms race by announcing a hardware-based messaging appliance that it promises will reduce latency for existing Rendezvous users, as well reducing the number of software servers in the data centre.
So with the potential end of life for SmartSockets drawing closer and TIBCO giving its own Rendezvous users a reason to end its tax monopoly, what choices present themselves to financial services architects who are looking to meet the very specific and demanding requirements of low-latency, high-performance messaging in financial services?
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