CIOs and application managers can expect an increasing number of requests from the business units for BAM and other event processing systems. Architects and developers who haven't built such systems in the past can learn from the experiences of those who have. The issue of tool selection has a few surprises: most BAM systems are not built with commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) "BAM" tools, and most event processing is not done by COTS complex-event processing (CEP) engines either. However, BAM tools and CEP engines are quite valuable and cost-effective when used in the right situations.

To address the growing importance of this field, Gartner has organized a new conference on Event Processing and Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) to be held from September 19-21, 2007 in Orlando Florida (see http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=502259&tab=overview). It is aimed primarily at architects, software engineers, business analysts and IT managers. The conference has a special emphasis on case studies. About 13 case study speakers will participate, along with 3 experts from academia and a number of Gartner analysts. We will also be joined by 16 vendors of event processing and BAM products who will demonstrate the range of capabilities available on the market today. This article provides a look at some of the issues regarding tool selection for those who will attend the conference and others who just want to learn more about the subject.