Webinar: BAM: The Killer App for CEP

Just recently found out that the folks at SL have confirmed an eBiz webinar where I’ll be speaking with colleague Ted Wilson about BAM: The Killer App for CEP.

Key Indicators (KIs) Versus Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

SL‘s new web page, Solutions for CEP Engine Users, discusses how CEP is a “technology that is used to help companies detect both opportunities and threats in real-time with minimal coding and reusable key performance indicators (KPIs) and business models.”

I agree with SL, but would like to suggest my friends at SL expand the notion of KPIs in CEP to include the idea of KIs.  In my opinion, the SL phrase should read,  “technology that is used to help companies detect both opportunities and threats in real-time with minimal coding and reusable key indicators (KIs) and business models.”  

The reason for my suggestion is that KPIs are a subset of KIs.   KIs designate, in my mind, more than just performance.  

CEP is used to both detect opportunities and threats in real-time which may, or may not be, performance related.  For example, when a CEP engine detects evidence of fraudulent behavior, this is a KI.  The knowledge, or pattern, used to estimate this situation is a KI not a KPI, per se.   Also, when a CEP application is processing market data and indicates that it is the right time to purchase an equity and enter the market,  the knowledge used in this decision support application is a KI, not a KPI.

Therefore, I recommend when folks think about the notion of  “key performance indicators” (KPIs) in CEP and BAM, they should also think in terms of “key indicators” (KIs).   Detecting opportunities and threats in real-time are much broader than the traditional notion of KPIs. 

The Amazing Alpine Golf Club, Bangkok – Thank You Starwood!

Wow!    Sometimes we are reminded why they say “Amazing Thailand!”

Today I was a guest of Starwood Hotels and Resorts  to play in a special Starwood golf event at the Alpine Golf and Sports Club just outside of Bangkok.   Thank you Starwood and the General Manager of the Royal Orchid Sheraton, Mr. Charles Jack, who was very kind to invite me as his guest.

This is one of the finest golf courses in Thailand (and Thailand has many fine golf courses!) 

The Starwood folks were fantastic!  Everyone was amazing.   Some holes had professional golfers offering tips to help my game.  Other holes had delicious Chinese and Thai food.  One hole had supurb freezing cold champagne waiting to refresh us from the hot Thai sun!!

The Alpine Golf Course was really challenging, so the champagne was needed as much as appreciated.   There was large water hazards on almost every hole; and some of the holes had so many large bunkers I thought I was on the beach!    You could not miss a shot, because it you did, it was either in the water, the sand, on rolling hills covered with green trees – and believe me, that is where I played most of the day!!

Everything was great, an amazing experience with a touch of class you can only find in Thailand, plus the added luxury of being the guest of Starwood, which is a also an unbelievable class act as well.

Being a loyal Starwood customer has great privileges, not to mention some of the finest hotel and resort properties in the world, so please, take my advice and become a Starwood member if you are not already.

By the way, I am currently staying at another exceptional Starwood property, the Plaza Athenee Le Meridian.   This is a fantastic property.  I highly recommend you stay at the Plaza Athenee Le Meridian if you are in Bangkok for business or leisure.

Also, when the current renovation is complete, the Royal Orchid Sheraton, where I often spends weeks at a time, is also highly recommended if you enjoy life on the busy Chao Phraya River.

Events are the Heart of the COSO ERM Framework

COSO was originally formed in 1985 to sponsor the National Commission on Fraudulent Financial Reporting, an independent private sector initiative which studied the cause-and-effects that can lead to fraudulent financial reporting. 

COSO developed enterprise risk management (ERM) recommendations for public companies and their independent auditors, and also for the SEC, other regulators, and for educational institutions.

At the heart of COSO is events and how events, both opportunity and threat-related events, in context, effect enterprise risk management.

Detecting opportunity and threats in real-time, both mentioned in COSO, is a core CEP concept; so I will be blogging on how CEP relates to COSO and ERM (and also Basel II ORM) in a future blog post.

Please stay tuned …

BEP is BEP, CEP is CEP

Joe McKendrick, in Taking the ‘complex’ out of complex event processing, makes a case for renaming CEP, BEP.

Joe references IBM’s Sandy Carter, as I did in my post earlier today, IBM Says Business Event Processing is Not CEP.

Joe wants to change the world “complex” to “business” in CEP because he believes the word “complex” is not good for marketing.

The problem with Joe’s approach, as I see it, is that CEP is different than BEP.  However, I remain open-minded on the topic.

There is quite a difference in event-driven orchestration-oriented processing, BEP. and situation detection-oriented event processing, CEP.

BEP is, for the most part, about orchestrating event-driven business processes.

CEP is about detecting opportunities and threats (situations) in real-time.

It is not clear to me that simply renaming BEP CEP touches the core technical and business differences.

IBM Says Business Event Processing is Not CEP

Sandy Carter, IBM’s vice president of SOA and WebSphere strategies, said something in IBM Buys AptSoft To Boost BPM-SOA Line I completely agree with, relative to most of the technologies folks are calling “CEP” these days:

“In the marketplace today, everybody talks about complex event processing,” Carter said. “We actually are trying to rename that category, because we believe the real value is in business event processing, with a focus on the business.”

For example, none of the current CEP vendors are doing “complex event processing” as many of us have said, repeatedly.

TIBCO and AptSoft, for example, are examples of companies that are really implementing, business event processing. You can easily confirm this in TIBCO’s press release, TIBCO BusinessEvents 2.2 now shipping…, where Paul Vincent blogs:

The main change with this [TIBCO BusinessEvents 2.2] release is the inclusion of new deployment options:

+ deploy BusinessEvents within a BusinessWorks container: great for using BusinessEvents as a decision engine for SOA integration processes, choreography, transaction flow monitoring, etc, or for using BusinessWorks as a ruleflow tool.

+ deploy BusinessEvents as a BusinessWorks container: great for exploiting SOA orchestration and services under the control of CEP, such as invoking complex adapters.

This is absolutely, “business event processing” just as IBM’s Sandy Carter stated, correctly in my opinion, not CEP.

The same is true for event stream processing (ESP). ESP technology from companies like Apama, Coral8 and StreamBase, is much more closely aligned with the “business event processing” than anything that is truly CEP.

IBM Will Acquire AptSoft

I was wondering when IBM would actually jump into the event processing market.  

Well, it was announced today that IBM will acquire Aptsoft, adding an event processing platform to the IBM WebSphere porfolio.  IBM will also gain AptSoft’s event processing reference customers.  This was a smart move by IBM.

Oracle is acquiring BEA which uses Esper under the hood, another stream processing engine. 

However, AptSoft has a more advanced user interface and graphical design-time environment when compared to the Oracle/BEA/Esper platform,; so the IBM/WebSphere/AptSoft offering will propel IBM to the top of the event processing market.

Now, it’s TIBCO’s turn to acquire an event stream (time series) processing platform to compliment their process-driven event processing offering.