The B.I.S.S. (Benchmarking of International Systems & Services) certification was awarded to TIBCO following tests carried out by an independent industry user panel, gathered by CityCompass and a leading financial services sector analyst from CityCompass Research.

CityCompass organised a series of benchmarking tests in late 2004 via a panel of business executives representing the banking, securities and insurance industries to ascertain whether integration and web services systems achieved or failed business requirement benchmarks.

TIBCO scored highly in legacy integration capabilities, its XML and web services front office applications were commended, strengths were noted in middle office and regulation applications, while real-time benchmark tests achieved a "staggeringly high" score that has never before been achieved in past benchmark tests.

Gary Wright, Managing Director of CityCompass and creator of the business benchmarking concept, said: "TIBCO's suite of products scored highest of all entrants in most of the categories with nine of the tests passed and was accredited the B.I.S.S. gold standard for its good all round strength and relevance of its systems, to all types of financial services firms.

The TIBCO system proved scalable and volume insensitive during the benchmark tests set by the industry panel. The benchmark tests also highlighted outstanding Service Oriented Architecture functionality which will be important to financial services as the new MiFID (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive) regulations due in May 2007 become understood by business and IT operations."

"Accreditation such as B.I.S.S. highlights the excellent and powerful products that are finding their way into the market, but more importantly, it serves to broaden the general understanding of the importance of integration and web services and the inherent benefits they bring to the enterprise, " said Ram Menon, senior vice president, Worldwide Marketing, TIBCO Software Inc.