TIBCO’s Re-Implementation of R for the Enterprise

In a recent blog post on Forbes.com, contributor Dan Woods contrasted Microsoft’s R strategy of acquiring Revolution Analytics with that of TIBCO Software Inc.’s strategy of re-implementing R. Here, RT Insights founder and Executive Editor Les Yeamans shares his thoughts about TIBCO’s strategy.

I agree with Dan that TIBCO has it right. While R has become the standard for data science, its open source implementation is not up to the task of processing real-time, streaming data at scale. With TIBCO’s pedigree of delivering solutions in the most demanding, high-performance, real-time environments, a rewrite of R clearly made the most sense. Additionally, the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) license of R did not allow it to be embedded in commercial products.

TIBCO re-implemented open source R as TIBCO Enterprise Runtime for R (TERR). TERR allows R programs to be used for analysis (operationalized and embedded) and supports fast data applications for real-time, predictive decisions and automation.

I caught up with Michael O’Connell, Chief Data Scientist at TIBCO, at last month’s Gartner Business Intelligence & Analytics Summit. He explained how embedding TIBCO’s version of R in both the Spotfire platform and the Streambase product allowed for predictive analytics to increasingly be used on streaming, real-time data.

For example, TIBCO can deliver remote monitoring and predictive maintenance solutions for energy pumps, factory floor equipment and heart monitors.

In short, TIBCO’s customers now enjoy a lot more freedom and flexibility with R, and can deploy it anywhere they want or need it. This allows for the analysis of fast data at rest, and in motion, providing deeper, more powerful analytics solutions.