You've heard of object-based computing, SOA, BPM and BI, but what about event-driven computing? The term has been floating around out there, but what does it really mean and how does it differ from past technology paradigms?

Ruma Sanyal, BEA Systems' director of product marketing for time and event-driven products, shared the four key requirements for event-driven SOA and BPM functions during a recent ebizQ 'First Look' podcast.

1. A complete infrastructure for event processing -- an event-driven application. This application server that is purpose-built for event-processing should provide basic services like all the "ilities" of an app server like security, availability, manageability and so on and so forth, and beyond that like user management, fault tolerance, logging, all of the basic services should be built in that app server.

2. The event processing app server should have specific event processing capabilities -- it should come in with a complex event processing engine, it should have event-processing construct supports like event process, event sources, event sinks, event streaming. It should have scheduling services. It should have synchronization services. Those are all the capabilities required for event processing.

3. And then on top of that, the tools for developers and any other users that interact with this application server, such as administrators, business users, business analysts.

4. Out-of-the-box integration and interaction with typical SOA offerings, which are a service bus, ability to interface with Web services, ability to interface with and integrate with BPM and BAM, business process management and business activity monitoring.
The benefits, Sanyal notes, are threefold Sanyal. At the highest level, such an event-driven computing effort might be driven by the data proliferation in the enterprise and the need to find technology to manage that data and act upon it. Second, finding ways to manage data definitely increases business velocity. Third, event-driven computing isn't a pipe dream anymore.

"The technology providers and the vendors that have specific products for complex event processing and event-driven computing is present today," Sanyal asserts.
BEA has even coined a moniker for customers who aspire to respond immediately to business threats or opportunities: "the instantly responsive enterprise."
To find out more, listen to the podcast, read a complete transcript or send a question to Ruma Sanyal, visit this link.

About the Authors

Krissi Danielsson is a podcast producer with ebizQ and contributor to ebizQ’s SaaSWeek site. She started following the IT market while working as an assistant editor with TechTarget, where she spent four years covering a variety of technology areas, from Web services to enterprise Linux. As a freelance writer, she has also written for sites such as TechSpend, ComputerBits, and the iParenting network. Krissi is the author/co-author of four nonfiction books. Email: krissi@ebizq.net

Gian Trotta is ebizQ's managing editor. Before joining ebizQ, he developed a wide variety of virtual news and community features for Newsday, Prodigy, Time Inc., Excite, About.com and MSNBC.

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