Event Processing blog

Event Processing in Location-based Services

Business is event-driven. No. Wait. Life is event-driven, and if it wasn’t, we’d be walking into walls and every sentence would start with “Oops.” Life would be a string of missed opportunities. We’ve done a masterful job of using technology to transform our business processes into software, but one tenet that’s been missing is that business should imitate life. Sense and respond is what’s been missing.

We recently announced that match2blue (http://web.progress.com/inthenews/match2blue-stands-ou-11092009.html) will be using the event processing capabilities of Apama to provide location-based services in social networking. Sense and respond is crucial for their ability to enable like-minded people to connect in real-time. Traditional data processing technology and its normal rhythm of “capture, store, analyze” can’t, well, keep up. And in a world where latency leads to missed opportunities, match2blue is proving that through the right technology business can imitate life.

Responding to business events as they happen is what will define your competitive advantage.

Business is event-driven, indeed.

Progress Apama and Revenue Management Podcast

Listen to this podcast to learn how organizations are using Progress Apama Business Event Processing for Revenue Management.

Business Event Processing Podcast Overview

Listen to this podcast to get an overview of how Progress Apama Business Event Processing helps organizations to monitor, analyze and act on information in real-time.

Progress Apama Announcing Latest Release 4.2

As a follow up to the Louie Lovas blog posting on October 16^th , this  podcast captures a discussion between David Olson and Giles Nelson on Apama 4.2 features.

CEP in Transport and Logistics

Now maybe I’m biased since my focus is CEP outside of capital markets but, the announcement of Royal Dirkzwager’s (Koninklijke Dirkzwager  if you’re keeping score in Dutch) use of Apama sets an important tone for CEP. Working with the team that pulled Royal Dirkzwager’s project together, it was easy to see that the business need was there to harness the value of their free-flowing events.

Transport and Logistics (T&L) has a vast fabric of events that range from all the management “systems” to supply chain events and telematics. Without CEP, analysis of those events is either siloed (with spotty real-time abilities) or aggregated a day late and a dollar short. The T&L industry is being squeezed for efficiency and chasing new revenue opportunities is challenging. In the case of Royal Dirkzwager, it didn’t take long for them to survey their domain and recognize that real-time visibility and analysis of events in their fabric could significantly enhance customer satisfaction and the bottom line. Royal Dirkzwager also appreciates that CEP projects aren’t protracted lifetime engagements. They’re looking forward to rapid results.

Royal Dirkzwager’s use of GPS, GIS events as well as information from Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) and Long Range Identification and Tracking (LRIT) systems, when correlated with their other infrastructure events, is where the magic is. Yes, they had all those events before but CEP pulls them together and makes them much more meaningful. They’re also going to leverage their Sonic ESB as a convenient on- and off-ramp for many of their events. And while Royal Dirkzwager’s a maritime logistics provider, it’s not a far stretch to see how other land- or sea-based LSPs can put themselves in a similar position. Whether they own, manage or contribute to the supply chain, the events are there – harnessing them should be an imperative. Royal Dirkzwager’s not our first in this space and it won’t be the last.

I think we’ve done the right thing by having a laser beam focus on capital markets. Truly, a demanding environment when it comes to performance and usability. All that experience gives us the ability to jump into other event-oriented markets with the tools and experience to take on any challenge.

To Royal Dirkzwager, thank you for making my day. Who’s next?

-DO

We're going on Twitter

Louis Lovas and myself, Giles Nelson, have started using Twitter to comment and respond to exciting things happening in the world of CEP (and perhaps beyond occasionally!).

The intent is to complement this blog. We'll be using Twitter to, perhaps, more impulsively report our thinking. We see Twitter as another good way to communicate thoughts and ideas.

We would be delighted if you chose to follow our "twitterings" (to use the lingo), and we'll be happy to follow you too.

Click here to follow Louis and here to follow Giles (you'll need to signup for a Twitter account).

Calling all VARs

Greetings from Raleigh on January 26, 2009

I suppose an introduction is in order. My name is David Olson. Long time Progress person and I tend to float between technical and business roles in the company. Recently crossed over into the Apama world to focus on opportunities other than Capital Markets, which brings me to an interesting observation…

I've spent a lot of time working with our Application Partners (formerly known as VARs) and over the past few years I've made an effort to push CEP concepts to key partners. Many are in industries that have a few event streams that are ripe for the picking. Manufacturing, logistics, telco, and retail certainly rise to the top of the list. All tend to agree that there are events streaming through their customer's infrastructure and there may be a potential use case there but, few know what to do about it - and I suppose that's understandable.

For 50 years or so, we've concentrated our business application development on transforming traditional business processes into software. MRP/ERP has certainly led the call – but for the most part, ERP is done. And like the Holy Grail in the Monty Python movie it's getting harder to sell ERP because, you see, we’ve already got one.

Operational Effectiveness through CEP is the next frontier for business application software and I believe that it will shake up business processing the same way ERP did in the past. This isn't to say that ERP is not necessary, it's just that underlying platforms are not conducive for the "in the moment" nature of CEP solutions. In fact, the two should live comfortably side-by-side.

So VARs, this is your call. The infrastructure is mature, the technology is available, and your customers are ready. There's a new seed you can plant that can bring additional opportunity to your existing solutions. Take a look at what Manuvis has done with their FactoryMRI solution set. Real-time dashboards - right on their home page. CEP's a big part of what they do and they're making waves.

You should be next.

-DO