David Luckham: Why We Need a New Technology to Manage Information Systems and What That Technology Is

Corporations are becoming increasingly real time by utilizing both private networks and the Internet. What we are witnessing is the emergence of the "event-driven real time enterprise" as Gartner calls it, in which the whole business structure, processes and applications are event-driven. While Internet-based automation helps streamline businesses, cut costs and make them more profitable, it introduces a new problem --managing in real time. Management is becoming an increasing challenge. This is amply illustrated by the recent North Eastern power blackout in which, as Congressional hearings uncovered, no manager had a global view of that event-driven situation. A new technology is needed that allows business process managers to understand the event activity in their information systems. They cannot decipher reams of network logs, nor do they have the time to do so. They need high level views of event activity as it happens, views that immediately indicate how critical business functions are being impacted.

This talk will give a number of amusing illustrations from financial services, on-line marketing, industrial automation and security, of the need for a new management technology. We will then illustrate the basic concepts underlying such a technology, called Complex Event Processing (CEP). CEP technology is described in David Luckham's new book, "The Power of Events" (Addison Wesley).