Circling The Complex Event Processing Wagons
Events in business processes happen, and then the rest of the high-tech world scrambles to catch up with them.
But wouldn't it be nice if your company had technology that could react to business process events as they happen to make more informed business decisions?
This is why startups are banking on complex event processing (CEP) to
further capitalize on the explosive growth in RFID
CEP is an emerging category of software that conducts real-time queries on
high-speed data from systems, databases and applications.
The technology then applies rules to pinpoint patterns and trends that would
normally go unnoticed by IT administrators.
Combing through legacy data can help predict what might happen in the
future. In the case of RFID, it can be used to scan products to rapidly
gauge inventory in a supply chain.
Quick scanning and inventory checking can yield competitive advantages for
businesses trying to pump out a mass quantity of a quality product.
CEP might also spot threats or systems failures, making it an ideal candidate
for fraud detection and other types of security measures, said Gartner
analyst Roy Schulte.
"The benefit there is situational awareness," Schulte said. "You can extract
more information about your environment by applying rules to a series of
events. From that, you can derive a better understanding of what's happening
in the world."
Financial services businesses, such as trading firms, were among the first
companies to endorse such predictive correlation technologies, using
proprietary technologies to analyze data kept in millions of transactions.
But Ventana Research analyst Dan Everett said that event processing is
becoming increasingly necessary in all vertical businesses because of the
amount of real-time data companies produce.
Startups rev their processing engines
Numerous startups have toiled in relative obscurity to develop CEP
software to meet these demands.
Companies such as Coral8, Streambase, Aleri, AptSoft and others are hoping
their brands of event processing software will be strong enough to make them
the leader in a green-field market.
Coral8 CEO Terry Cunningham had his doubts that there was a viable market
for CEP. Over time, he said it became apparent that the need for CEP has been
accelerated by the proliferation of real-time data, especially in financial
services shops.
"Wall Street couldn't ignore it," he added. "They spent millions and
millions of dollars building custom applications to deal with the real-time
data, and they've been doing that for decades."
Coral8 just launched
version 4.0 of its software engine with a huge emphasis on scalability, and
is relying on a strategy Cunningham used to make Crystal Decisions a
successful company before he sold it
to Business Objects.
That approach is to convince the application developer that Coral8's
software will aid his ability to build quality software.
Cunningham said Coral8's engine sits apart from some of the other startups,
because it uses a SQL-based language, called Coral8 Continuous Computation
Language (CCL), that makes it easier for developers to build an application
without Coral8 engineers looking over their shoulders.
This ease-of-use factor, Cunningham believes, will enthuse developers to
tell their bosses to buy Coral8's engine.
Why not, if they can build applications that can give business managers more
insight into the various events that affect their businesses?
And if that doesn't happen, they at least want to be attractive enough to
make the bigger vendors sit up and take notice, said Cunningham.
That's the thinking behind Coral8 and the other startups.
Next page: AptSoft takes a broader angle