Last week in conjunction with the launch of BusinessEvents Version 2.0, I had the chance to speak with the editor at InsideMarketData.com, Max Bowie. For a while, it was all pretty standard stuff, I was talking about the new BE release and its new functionality, new features, yada yada. But at some point, it became very interesting and more conversation-like and we ended up chatting for some time. Max also came back with some great insight into the CEP industry and offering and future. He wrote an editorial with his insights for his newsletter. He calls it the ‘CEP conundrum .’
Here’s how it goes:
Right now for traders, it’s all about speeds and feeds and if they can get there faster, it means a leg up on competitors. But what if everyone at some point has the same or equivalent speeds and feeds through CEP or its equivalent? No competitive advantage ! Max’s theory is it comes down to better analysis of complex data which is where he thinks CEP will really start fulfilling its promises. Put another way, at some point the speeds will be fast enough, but will the insight be ‘wise’ enough? As Max puts it, trading firms turning to technology that can add greater value through intensive analysis, and which will differentiate firms based on the intelligence of their algorithms and their ability to identify longer-term strategies, rather than the size of their budgets and speed of their ticker plants.
I also happen to think his example points out the real difference between Event Streams Processing (ESP) and CEP, where CEP products offer more intensive analysis and intelligence/wisdom through declarative rule processing.
What do you think?
