It's quite common for hardware manufacturers to expand into also offering software that manages and/or runs on their servers or other devices. But it's far less common to find a large pure-play software company getting into the hardware business.

But it's perhaps not surprising that Tibco is moving in this direction, given that demand for low-latency messaging has spawned a number of specialist companies that offer dedicated hardware messaging appliances, for example Solace Systems and Tervela. And it's also an area that Tibco's major messaging competitor IBM has gone into with its DataPower appliance.

In fact, Tibco has contracted with Solace as its manufacturing partner for the P-7500 device, but the real difference with this device comes from how Tibco has embodied the logic and APIs of its widely deployed Rendezvous software in updateable field-programmable gate arrays. It says this is the key to the impressive performance stats it is touting.

Originally revealed at Tibco's user conference last April, the device was originally slated for a September launch. It's been pilot tested by about ten financial institutions since then. Now it's widely available it should be a fairly easy sell for Tibco into its existing Rendezvous customer base, although the company has had to change its original marketing strategy (focusing on volumes, performance etc.) to one that taps into the current vogue for infrastructure cost reduction.