CHAPTER 9

The Future of Event Processing

Complex event processing (CEP) will become part of the supporting technology service within the enterprise information infrastructure of the future. Some of the systems that use CEP as a supporting technology will evolve into global holistic event processing systems:

  • Event processing becomes a supporting technology within the IT infrastructure
  • Large-scale holistic event processing systems appear
  • CEP disappears under the hood of these event-driven systems
  • Businesses take a global view of information and events
  • Five example areas where holistic event processing systems will emerge:

1. Unifying air traffic control

2. Pandemic watch

3. Monitoring “the consequences” (Al Gore)

4. Solving gridlock in the metropolis

5. Tracking your information footprint

This chapter is about the kinds of holistic event processing systems that can be expected to emerge in the future and the role CEP will play in them. It is not about what will happen with absolute certainty. Rather, it is a vision of what may probably happen in the longer term and the reasons why that vision might turn out to be correct.

Taking Stock

At the present time, CEP is an event processing technology that is being marketed either as a standalone tool or as a visible component of a suite of business intelligence tools. Eventually, it will become a foundational technology within large application systems.

We believe CEP will become largely invisible to the average user of business event ...

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