Pioneering Real-time Computing: TIBCO CEO Vivek Ranadivé (Part 7)

SM: How much of this vision is already playing out?

VR: A lot. Our leading edge customers already have it. You can go industry by industry and see how they are doing it. With the scope and velocity of life how it is, there is no other way to solve the problem. We as a software industry have way under-delivered. How do you explain how the cost of processing, chips, networks, and hardware have dropped yet the cost of IT has gone up? We need to do better.

SM: In the last generation, all the middleware world became a goldmine for system integrators. Will this be another goldmine for system integrators, or will it be less system integration and more plug-and-play?

VR: We are going to move from software as a service to software as a self service. It will be people being able to do things themselves. The model is more of what companies like Facebook are doing.

SM: It is more like a development platform?

VR: If you look at Facebook, my daughter can go there and create something within minutes. She can then join to save the snow leopards. It is a platform to deliver services, and that is where we see customers moving and solving problems. There is a lot of low-hanging fruit in terms of the problems we are solving.

If you get off an airplane and you made it but your bag didn’t, you have to wait in line to find out that it is not there. Then you go wait in line to fill out paperwork. Everyone does this routinely. We are solving that problem. When the plane takes off, it is known that you got on a plane but your bag didn’t. It is just matching up pieces of information.

The world is event-driven. Things happen. We are going from batch to online to event-driven. It matches the increased velocity, which matches how we live. You can’t do that in a database. We are seeing great reception to this message.

SM: How do you feel personally at this stage of your career?

VR: I feel as though I have a long way to go. I feel like my best days are ahead.

SM: What else should I have asked you that I didn’t?

VR: People have often asked me what are the key lessons I can pass on, and there are three things I tell them. First, anything that has been done can be done better. Even looking at the Internet, it is the world’s largest legacy system. When Phil [Knight] started Nike people had been making shoes for hundreds of years.

The second piece of advice is to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. The third thing is to persevere no matter what the pain. Never give up no matter what. Those are the lessons I would pass on to any entrepreneur.

SM: You also illustrated the benefits of bootstrapping. Capital is drying up, so what choice do entrepreneurs have?

VR: I think that is a good thing. I have a saying: In strong wind turkeys can fly. When the wind stops, all the turkeys start falling out of the sky. You need to fly when the wind stops or you are a turkey. It makes the strong stronger.

SM: Great. This has been super.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Pioneering Real-time Computing: TIBCO CEO Vivek Ranadivé
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