TIBCO EBX new version

TIBCO Software Inc (now part of Cloud Software Group) was founded in 1997 and made its name for real-time integration software. In late 2018 it purchased master data management (MDM) software Orchestra Networks, and continues to actively market this software, called EBX. EBX has long been a major player in the MDM market, driven by a core data model that generates services including a customizable user interface, data quality rules and more.

In June 2024 there was a major release (v 6.2) of the software. A new environment to manage the scripting language was introduced, covering syntax highlighting, error detection and version history. There was a completely new user interface, based on the React library with a RESTful API. Users can now easily create a custom landing page with shortcuts via drag and drop. Although EBX has never been a data governance product, this version of software introduced a new catalog feature with data governance features, enabling data assets, reports etc to be documented and searched, and business terms defined in a glossary. A metadata engine utilizes another TIBCO product to connect to and ingest metadata from a wide range of other sources. This feature is intended to support the data governance needs of customers, but is not designed to compete directly with specialist data catalog products such as Collibra. Indeed, EBX can ingest metadata directly from a Collibra catalog.

Data visualization saw improvements, with a streamlined display of record history and a new organization chart visual display.. EBX was always good at workflow, with for example the ability to handle parallel workflow requests, and this continues to be a strength of the product.

There was a new data matching feature launched, displaying vertical as well as horizontal display of records. There is also an evaluation of matching criteria shown so users can understand why EBX identifies data records as potential matches, all presented in a graphical form. Additionally, there were improvements in digital asset management, and performance improvements including pre-filtering and various underlying architectural modernization steps.

In summary, version 6.2 of EBX demonstrates a significant ongoing investment in this MDM technology, allowing it to compete effectively with other MDM products such as those from Informatica, Ataccama, Semarchy and Reltio.