Product Snapshot: Tifosi 2002

August 16, 2002 — In early August, Fiorano Software released Tifosi 2002, a peer-to-peer services integration platform that builds, deploys, modifies, and debugs business processes. The platform includes Tifosi Peer Servers, based on JMS (Java Message Service); the Tifosi Enterprise Server; and FioranoMQ, Fiorano’s Java messaging server. With an infrastructure based on JMS, Tifosi leverages the computing power of a network’s endpoints; an organization doesn’t need to rely on a single server to handle all its operations.

Scott Sorensen, a principal developer and architect with United Internetworks, a wholesale provider of fixed wireless broadband services, has been using Tifosi for about one year. “We chose Tifosi because our system architecture was based on a distributed message-based architecture and Tifosi architecture fit very nicely with ours,” he says. “Tifosi’s distributed message-based architecture developed on top of their top-notch JMS implementation is very elegant. High priority evaluation criteria included scalability, fault-tolerance, extensibility, and cost—both licensing and implementation cost.”

Based on a component model, Tifosi allows users to drag and drop pretested components onto a screen and, with the platform’s dynamic deployment capabilities, deploy the application on multiple machines with a click of a button. The model allows, for example, one machine’s component to retrieve a sales order and pipe the data to another component that accesses the database for a customer profile. That component then sends that information out to a third component, and so on. When the application changes, Tifosi allows users to redeploy the modified application without stopping it.

“The simple component model allows business managers as well as technical managers to mix and match integration solutions with collaborative solutions,” says Atul Saini, CTO and CEO of Fiorano Software. “The platform is not just restricted to enterprise application integration. It can be used for business process management, B2B [business-to-business] integration. It melds all these worlds together.”

Sorensen agrees that Tifosi is simple to use. “We have been very impressed with the ease with which we have been able to create distributed network applications and debug these applications,” he says. “Tifosi has allowed us to institutionalize some of our key business processes and meter, monitor, and manage these processes. Before, these processes were either manually or hard-coded into our systems. The tool is still a little immature, but the development staff at Fiorano has been very responsive to our requests for fixes and improvements.”

In addition, Tifosi includes tools that allow users to create components such as sales orders, purchase orders, or adaptors for ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems. Users can build and test these components offline before deploying them. Tifosi also supports distributed debugging and versioning, and includes a set of adaptors.

“We’re bringing together the worlds of development and deployment into a single platform,” says Saini.

Saini says the platform could fit any company’s needs. He says the platform’s integration power would appeal to Fortune 500 companies that have numerous internal operations they want to integrate into one platform. He notes that independent software vendors are also turning to Tifosi to build CRM (customer relationship management) and supply-chain solutions.

“For smaller and mid-tier companies, the need for integration is there, but the pricing is intimidating,” says Saini. “That’s another market where our product can have significant value.” Tifosi’s server component costs 5,000 per CPU and ,000 per daemon for the first 10 daemons, ,000 for the next 10, and 00 for the remainder. For more information, go to https://www.fiorano.com/products/tifosi/overview.htm