CHAPTER 1
Event Processing and the Survival of the Modern Enterprise
All the world’s information is at your fingertips—but can you make use of it?
—Vinton Cerf, 2005
You probably think that every twenty-first-century enterprise uses events and event processing in its business operations. That would seem obvious, given our information-driven world, which is inundated with sources of events from just about everywhere. But you would be wrong! The truth is that a lot of businesses think they use event processing. And, yes, a lot of them do—in their network management and communications. A few businesses go further and use event processing to drive some of their operations, such as supply chain management or consumer relations. And then there are the electronic stock trading and online gaming industries, both of which are totally event driven, but those are niche markets for event processing.
Many times, it turns out on closer inspection that businesses could make much greater use of the events already at their disposal in their business operations and planning. They could do a lot more with today’s event processing technology than they currently do to improve the running of the enterprise, their awareness of the business environment, and consequently their business decision making—and it would benefit them greatly in terms of their competitiveness and profitability if they did. Indeed, for some of them, adopting the latest event processing technology in their intelligence gathering ...
