As I write the last of my event summary reports and follow up action items, I am now officially putting a bow on the TIBCO user conference (TUCON 2008)
What a madhouse. I was accountable for the TIBCO Analyst Summit (TIBCO’s first ever), two days of the Business Optimization track of presentations (combining engineering, customer and analyst presentations) and ensuring that TIBCO CEP BusinessEventsTM booth was staffed and overflowing with interested folks. Add in various podcasts and spokesperson duties for press and customers and it all equaled a stressful, crazed and wholly satisfying event at the same time, if that’s possible.
I met some great folks from all over the world: partners, analysts, customers – in particular, Southwest Airlines and Allstate Insurance – knowledgeable and fine folks in all respects, really pushing the edge of what is possible in IT and event processing.
What I experienced at the conference relative to CEP, was this. It appears that the mainstream messaging, integration and SOA folks are finally getting it and see the value in event driven SOA and are asking for CEP and BusinessEventsTM by name. There is also a groundswell of interest in Business Optimization and some analysts like IDC and other sundry vendors are seeing Business Optimization as the next big thing.
And they’re right. Booyah!.
Quite a few nice posts ended up in the blogosphere that comment on TUCON, SOA, CEP et al – , Sandy Kemsley, Joe McKendrick, Dana Gardner, Tony Baer among others with interesting perspectives.
However, my biggest AHA moment was the realization in listening to our other customers, besides Southwest and Allstate, that some of the greatest applications of CEP are not the big and noticeable “complex” events that marketing folks like to talk about. They are instead using TIBCO BusinessEvents much more low key and pragmatically, like making sure their customers are less irritated or their business can recover quicker from unforeseen circumstances.
I’ll quote my colleague Chris M. when he says “it opens BusinessEvents up to solving common everyday problems which should be easy to do, but for some reason are hard (e.g. Baggage Handling).”
For many of our customers, it’s not overly visible, but it works for them.
And that’s what really matters.
