Event processing and event driven architecture (EDA) provide a way for organizations to implement real time visibility and proactive decision making in the enterprise. Just about every survey we do shows that business agility is the #1 business driver for most IT investments these days. While SOA is being touted as the architecture for delivering agility, EDA is the architecture that provides real time visibility, alerts, and recognition of impending issues to enable more proactive management.

Event processing is actually not new. It has been in use for many years in the financial industry. Algorithmic trading is an example. It has also been used in systems and network monitoring. However, there seems to be some misconceptions and confusion about how EDA relates to SOA, how it is different, and how it can be of use in mainstream applications.

If you've been pondering these questions, ebizQ is holding a virtual conference next week which will feature the luminaries in the event processing field. Roy Schulte, VP Gartner, will be giving a keynote presentation that explain much about what event processing is and what it can do. The Jake Frievald of iWay will be speaking about BI in an Event Driven World where he will present a generic event-driven BI framework gleaned from what customers have actually been implementing. We have an all star panel featuring David Luckham, father of CEP and Mani Chandy, professor at Cal Tech. Then Charles Brett will present Forrester's Event Processing Taxonomy.

This conference will feature a brand new virtual environment which includes a networking lounge and new virtual booths. Attendees who visit all the booths will be eligible to win a GPS system. At the end of the day we are giving away 5 copies of David Luckam's book "The Power of Events", for the five best questions of the day.

So come and ask your questions. This event is pretty much guaranteed to provide you with valuable information.

Posted by bethgb in EDA • Events | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There is a very big movement in the industry away from after-the-fact reporting and analysis to on-demand information delivered in context, what some are calling operational BI. Last year ebizQ did a virtual conference on BI in Action during which we had a panel discussion on BI and BPM, and how BI was evolving into more on-demand, operational BI. The overall message was clear. Organizations are seeking more in-depth information on-demand, within the course of business, as opposed to periodic, after-the-fact reports.

I recently spoke with Truviso about an innovative approach they have developed for delivering on-demand information in high data volume environments. As Roman Bukary, VP marketing and business development, explained it, instead of executing SQL queries against large volumes of data, Truviso analyzes the information as it moves through the pipe. It actually uses standard SQL, but can apply queries to high volume data streams, and feed dashboards with the information or even trigger data-driven actions and alerts.

The company was co-founded in 2005 by Berkley professor Michael Franklin and his assistant Sailesh Krishnamurthy, who is now the chief architect. They developed an engine that uses standard SQL queries to analyze data as it moves across systems, regardless of where it comes from. The result is massive scalability and performance, clocked at 100,000 records per second on a single machine. Additionally, thousands of concurrent queries can be run continuously and simultaneously on a single server, and the queries can be run over both real-time and historical data from within a single engine. Truviso uses open source database PostgreSQL which enables data to be optionally persisted for replay, back-testing, drill-down, bench-marking and other purposes. The system can be run distributed across applications, databases, and edge devices, allowing for massive linear scalability. The system includes integration components so it can accept data from multiple different sources, including message queues. Each connector is provides transformation capabilities.

Foreign currency trading was the first market Truviso entered. They also have solutions for capital markets, retail inventory, logists, SOA/Network monitoring, and RFID/Sensor Network.

Because it built on top of PostgreSQL, it can deploy natively on any OS or hardware platform. It can run in a virtualized environment, and Truviso is (or will soon be) available as a SaaS solution. Because it uses standard SQL companies can migrate historical reporting to real-time analysis in a matter of hours.

BI meets event processing. On demand BI. Intelligent event processing. This technology seems to span categories, as well as uses in the enterprise.

Posted by bethgb in BI • Business Intelligence • EDA • Industry News • Industry Trends | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When Gartner started talking about EDA there were numerous debates whether Event Driven Architecture (EDA) was an implementation style of SOA or whether it was a distinct architecture apart from SOA. I originally considered it to be the former, but have now been convinced of the latter. You can implement EDA without SOA, and you can certainly implement as request-reply style of SOA without EDA.

However, surveys done by ebizQ and others have consistently shown that the number one reason for companies adopting SOA is to increase business agility. Reuse is second by a good margin. For this reason Gartner has launched a new Event Processing Summit. A few weeks ago Roy Schulte did an ebizQ webinar on "Event Processing: Competitive Advantage Through Situational Awareness, ", but the title could just as easily been an EDA Primer. If you want to know more about EDA, definitely check it out.

The general idea is that while the communication paradigm for Web services is primarily request/reply, an event drive architecture pushes information out to stakeholders as they occur. In the webinar Roy discusses Complex Event Processing (CEP) and Event-stream Processing (ESP). CEP correlates multiple events in one or a few event streams, and provides "sophisticated pattern detection of event relationships, causality, event hierarchies, multiple layers of abstraction".

Brenda Michelson, ebizQ blogger and founder of Elemental Links implemented an EDA when she was the Enterprise Architect at L.L. Bean. Brenda is another EDA expert I listen to a lot. She defines 3 styles of EDA. There is simple event notification, where something happened and someone is notified, event stream processing where events are filtered and only noteworthy events trigger notification; and complex event processing which applies analytics to detect patterns and even predict behavior. Different types of technologies are used to implement these different styles of EDA.

The business agility SOA delivers is directly tied to loose coupling. EDA maximizes the agility of SOA. On the flip side, using SOA to implement EDA solutions also creates greater technology independence increasing both agility and reuse. Organizations embarking upon their SOA paths should definitely pay attention to EDA.

What is your organization doing about EDA? ebizQ is conducting a research survey on EDA. Take the survey and be entered for a chance to win an iPhone.

To learn more about EDA check out these articles:
"Understanding Event-Driven Architecture", Roy Schulte, Vice President and Distinguished Analyst, Gartner, Inc. and Dr. K. Mani Chandy, Simon Ramo Professor of Computer Science, California Institute of Technology.

"The Role of Event Processing in Modern Business", Dr. K. Mani Chandy, Simon Ramo Professor of Computer Science, California Institute of Technology and Roy Schulte, Vice President and Distinguished Analyst, Gartner, Inc.

Posted by bethgb in EDA • Industry Trends • SOA | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)