02.04.10
Whatever Event Processing
Consolidation in the software business is like the force of gravity. Although there will always be best of breed solutions, ultimately as a particular solution space matures, it doesn’t do so in isolation. No technology is an island.
But of course, there’s always been the question, what to do about Complex Event processing (CEP)? Obviously, only a dropout from marketing could have ever dreamt up a product name whose emphatic message is, “this product is too difficult for you.” (Actually the name just evolved out of academic research.)
Research from our day job at Ovum revealed that there is no single set of use cases, but instead that there are uses for event processing that differ based on complexity of the event or the latency at which events must be processed.
The technology itself is not new – financial services firms have used their own routines to drive algorithmic trading or couch risk for years. What’s new – as in new during the past 10 years – is that a commercial software market has evolved out of it. But the market has struggled because of a number of factors that start with the question, “What is CEP or whatever you call it?
For now we won’t get hung up on names. Let’s stick with Whatever Event Processing, and invent a new TLA: WEP II, so as to distinguish it from Wireless Encryption Protocol. OK, we’re just joking. Suffice it to say that we are talking about a technology that parses out events that would not otherwise be human perceptible that can be translate into actionable intelligence.
Nonetheless, whatever you call it – complex event processing, business event processing, or just plain event processing – is a technology that was never meant to stand alone. There is logical synergy with business process management, as processes can trigger a chain of events or vice versa. There is a similar symbiosis with rules processing – you can use rules to parse and identify unique chains of events, or unique chains of events that are identified can trigger response through rules or policy management. And of course there is a synergy with SOA, as event processing can be exposed as a service that may be consumed by other applications.
But what became clear to us was that the very act of parsing and analyzing event streams, whether through time-based SQL approaches or through rules processing for identifying specific occurrences that must be dealt with, is a prime example of business intelligence. This form of BI does not replace other established uses, ranging from look-back historical analysis to quasi-real time BI where data warehouses or data marts are trickle fed data to keep them almost current. Instead, parsing events as they occur can provide a snapshot of what is occurring now, and form the basis for feed-forward predictive analytics.
Streambase will vehemently disagree with us, but the days of the standalone CEP vendor are over. More specifically, there is room for maybe one or two strong independents – just as players like Informatica and Teradata have survived as independent players. (But as Seth Grimes has pointed out, that also leaves Teradata currently standing by the wall at a party without a CEP date.)
So our first take on Sybase’s acquisition of Aleri is just that – an inevitable act of industry consolidation. Just as Informatica recently swept up Agent Logic, initially to boost its U.S. federal business. Both Sybase and Aleri have already been on first dates, with a 2-year old where Sybase integrated Aleri’s event processing engine as an input to its RAP trading platform. But secondly, the potential BI connection hasn’t escaped us. Sybase could add the Aleri technology – actually there are three of them, which translates to a lot of migration and consolidation. More to the point, when “Sybaleri” grows up, it could offer event processing to its BI portfolio as a piece of look-forward technology.
As (almost) the last man standing, Streambase is having its fun, offering an “amnesty” to Sybaleri customers. When we inquired whether Sybaleri customers were criminals, Streambase CEO Mark Palmer jokingly reassured us that they were just “misguided souls.”
We’ll be speaking with Sybase and Streambase later this afternoon and may update this post later.