Tibco makes new move into APIs and microservices with nanoscale.io purchase

Move aims to appeal to developers deploying cose to containers, IoT, serverless and mobile platforms

Tibco has purchased US-based microservices startup nanoscale.io to bolster its presence in the areas of APIs, hybrid cloud and IoT edge devices.

The venerable software company, which made its name in the 1990s with its high-speed enterprise bus software for real-time trading, has been moving in this direction for some time. In 2015 it purchased API management firm Mashery from Intel, a move designed to help third parties build applications on its data integration platform. The nanoscale.io purchase, for an undisclosed amount, is intended to boost these credentials.

"The next generation of digital experiences are going to be powered by microservices architecture, which will create significant challenges and complexities for developers," said Rajeev Kozhikkattuthodi, vice president of product and strategy at Tibco, in a statement.

"We're continuing to expand our strong roots and expertise in connected intelligence and API management with technologies like nanoscale.io's next-generation application tooling for microservices. These solutions keep our customers on the leading edge of digital transformation initiatives and enable us to provide breakthrough capabilities for developers in this space."

Nanoscale.io, based in Reston, Virginia, provides tools to make it easy for developers to build and deploy microservices and functions-as-a-service - small standalone applications that can run on serverless platforms, on IoT edge devices, on mobile devices or in containers such as Docker - in any programming language, what's known as "bring your own code" or BYOC.

"The addition of nanoscale.io to the Tibco portfolio will also allow customers to take advantage of new trends related to serverless computing and Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) application styles. These technologies can significantly reduce operational costs, especially in edge and IoT applications where more processing takes place on the local device, with a more efficient utilisation of microservices," Tibco says on its web site.

Tibco was purchased by Vista Equity Partners in 2014 in a deal valuing the company at $4.3bn It was one in a wave of many established technology companies to go private at that time. Others included BMC, Dell, Informatica and Compuware.

Serverless cloud will be an area of focus at the forthcoming Computing Cloud & Infrastructure Summit 2017 - registration is free for most delegates