TIBCO's name stood for "The Information Bus," software built for trading floors where a delay of seconds cost money. The bus let separate computer systems publish and receive messages the instant something changed. It began on Wall Street in the late 1980s. By 1999 large companies of every kind had the same problem across their own systems, and the web made it more urgent. When TIBCO went public that July, Reuters owned a majority of it.

From Teknekron to Everyone

Vivek Ranadivé built the information bus at his earlier company, Teknekron Software Systems. Reuters bought Teknekron in 1994. In 1997 TIBCO Software became its own company, so it could sell the technology beyond finance. The bet was that every business would need what traders needed: data that arrived as events happened, instead of in nightly batches. TIBCO called this "the event-driven enterprise" and sold it to banks, telecom companies, and manufacturers.

Vista, Then Citrix

TIBCO priced its offering at $15 a share in July 1999. The stock climbed sharply through the following year and fell with the rest of the market in 2001. The company stayed profitable and grew by acquisition, adding integration, analytics, and visualization products. In 2014 Vista Equity Partners took TIBCO private for about $4.3 billion. TIBCO later became part of Cloud Software Group, alongside Citrix.

Cover: The Reading Telegraph Coach, Robert Havell. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a fast mail coach (the information bus).