Forrester analyst Mike Gualtieri presented on his view of the Complex Event Processing space versus the BRE space – Mike is co-author of both the BRE and CEP Forrester reports. So, going into this, the audience were wondering: is Mike going to say “keep them separate – they are tackling different problems”? Or “they are doing much the same thing – combine them”?
Mike gave a simplistic version of the differences between BREs and CEP engines: CEP handling multiple event channels for input and output, and using (mostly) different algorithms. Mike used the term “event handlers” for the equivalent to BRE rulesets (roughly equivalent to EPTS‘ Event Processing Elements). as well as the term “temporal cache” for CEP event stores. He also coined the term “Event Processing Architecture” to describe CEP-based architectures and event processing networks. Although I quite like some of this terminology, Mike was called out by the audience for his use of some terms – for example comparing CEP with “Business Rules” (when he meant “Business Rule Engines”, and would have been even more accurate if he just said data-driven rule engines…). He was also called out by the audience when he claimed no BREs had temporal constructs for the example he showed (which was recognisable as an example from a mostly-financial-services CEP vendor) – when a few do…
Also mentioned were 2 examples of where CEP and BRE technology are already being combined – including TIBCO BusinessEvents (described as “poaching from the BRE market”, although I prefer to think the customer base is just becoming better educated… ), and the open source Drools offering (described as a BRE introducing some CEP features).
Mike ended with his comment that real-time / temporal business rules / decisions should all be processed on a single platform, not on separate CEP and BRE platforms. Which of course is what TIBCO does today – so kudos to Mike for calling this out at a BRE conference.
As a side note I see the parallel session by Gartner’s Jim Sinur (on BRManagement as a partner to Process) also mentioned how “rules technology was being included in CEP”…
