Gartner Says Companies Must Adopt Modern Event Processing Techniques to Improve Operations

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20091021005896/en

Analyst Highlights Findings from Upcoming Book "Event Processing: Designing IT
Systems for Agile Companies" at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2009, October 18-22, in
Orlando
ORLANDO, Fla.--(Business Wire)--
In an era of accelerating business processes and exploding volumes of digital
event data, companies must master the art of event processing if they are to
thrive or even survive, according to Gartner Inc.

Gartner explains how to implement modern event processing systems in the
recently released book "Event Processing: Designing IT Systems for Agile
Companies", published by McGraw Hill. Roy Schulte, vice president and
distinguished analyst at Gartner, and K. Mani Chandy, Simon Ramo Professor at
the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, are co-authors
of the book.

Mr. Schulte and Mr. Chandy presented findings from the book at Gartner
Symposium/ITxpo, taking place here through October 22. They said escalating
business requirements are driving the need to use event processing.

"It`s a familiar story: the pace of business has increased, the world is
changing faster, and competition is getting tougher," said Mr. Schulte. "These
business pressures have inspired the development of numerous modern management
strategies with the net result that the world is awash with advice on why your
company needs to be more responsive and adaptable. It`s now time to move on to
the more important discussion of how to actually do it. Smart devices,
sense-and-respond systems and situation awareness depend on getting the maximum
value from business event data."

Mr. Schulte and Mr. Chandy warned that these aspirations can`t be achieved by
simply speeding up traditional business processes or exhorting people to work
harder and smarter with conventional applications. Instead they urged companies
to make fundamental changes in the architecture of business processes and the
application systems that support them by using more of the event-processing
discipline.

"While a typical business process has time-driven, request-driven and
event-driven aspects, event-driven architecture (EDA) is underutilized in system
design resulting in slow and inflexible systems," said Mr. Chandy. "Event-driven
systems are intrinsically smart because they are context-aware and run when they
detect changes in the business world rather than occurring on a simple schedule
or requiring someone to tell them when to run."

If EDA is the first big idea on which event processing is based, then
event-driven complex-event processing (CEP) is the second. Event-driven CEP is a
way of distilling the information value from many incoming, simpler `base`
business events into a few more-useful, summary-level `complex` events. In this
way it helps companies achieve situation awareness to be able to make better and
faster decisions.

"Event-driven CEP is a kind of near real-time business intelligence (BI), a way
of `connecting the dots` to detect threats and opportunities," explained Mr.
Schulte. "By contrast, conventional BI is time-driven or request-driven. Complex
events may be reactive, summarizing past events or predictive, identifying
things that are likely to happen based on what has happened recently compared
with historical patterns."

CEP is used in a number of ways including: to supply the information to business
dashboards; send alerts to people through e-mail, SMS or other channels; trigger
business processes, application systems or services; and control actuators that
turn off machines, lock doors or perform other mechanical responses.

The main reason for the recent upsurge of interest in event processing is that
continuous intelligence has become practical to use in a wider variety of
business situations. "The cost of sensors and computing power has dropped,
network capacity has increased, and software technology to process events more
efficiently has been developed, enabling companies to do more with events than
they could in the past," Mr. Chandy said. "Moreover, customers are now demanding
sense and respond business systems that are fast, globally connected, and that
manage complex situations. Business people are using continuous intelligence
systems to cut through the `fog` of commerce, just as military commanders use
CEP to help cut through the `fog` of war."

Copies of "book "Event Processing: Designing IT systems for Agile Companies" are
available at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo. The book can also be purchased online at
http://www.amazon.com/Event-Processing-Designing-Systems-Companies/dp/0071633502/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254424063&sr=8-1.
Additional information about the book is available at
http://www.gartner.com/it/products/research/media_products/EP_book/index.jsp.

Gartner YouTube Channel

Additional comments from Mr. Schulte are also available on the Gartner YouTube
channel at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6Lb0FRojXM. A digital file of the
book cover is available at:
http://www.gartner.com/it/products/research/media_products/book/resources.jsp.
Additional videos are available at http://www.youtube.com/gartnervideo.

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About Gartner Symposium/ITxpo

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is the industry's largest and most important annual
gathering of CIOs and senior IT executives. This event delivers independent and
objective content with the authority and weight of the world's leading IT
research and advisory organization, and provides access to the latest solutions
from key technology providers. Gartner's annual Symposium/ITxpo events are key
components of attendees' annual planning efforts. They rely on Gartner
Symposium/ITxpo to gain insight into how their organizations can use IT to
address business challenges and improve operational efficiency. Additional
information on the event in Orlando can be found at
www.gartner.com/us/symposium.

Upcoming dates and locations for Gartner Symposium/ITxpo include:
November 2-5, Cannes, France: www.gartner.com/eu/symposium
November 11-13, Tokyo, Japan: www.gartner.com/jp/symposium
November 17-19, Sydney Australia: www.gartner.com/au/symposium

About Gartner

Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research
and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary
for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT
leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in
high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology
investors, Gartner is the indispensable partner to 60,000 clients in 10,000
distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner
Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with
every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the
context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in
Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 4,000 associates, including 1,200
research analysts and consultants in 80 countries. For more information, visit
www.gartner.com.

Gartner
Christy Pettey, +1 408-468-8312
christy.pettey@gartner.com

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