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Archives for December 2009

Rise of Event Processing / Active Information Picks

December 17, 2009 By brenda michelson

Earlier this month, I made my first and only prediction for 2010, that we would (finally) see the “Rise of Event Processing”.  Often, when I speak of Event Processing, I refer to a broader context of Active Information and (when relevant) the establishment of an Active Information Tier.  This past week, I read several articles that are applicable to the event processing / active information space.  I’ve included excerpts and links to 5 of those articles.  [Emphasis is my own.]

Briefly… I was particularly heartened to see the MIT Technology Review article dispel the notion that real-time, and the real-time web, is solely the domain of Twitter and related social media technologies.  The Economist SIS and Fast Company Corventis pieces highlight interesting sense, analyze and respond use cases in the real (physical) world.  The Carol Bartz piece, also in The Economist, discusses leadership traits in the age of information deluge.  Finally, the Progress Software predictions echo my sentiment in “Rise of Event Processing”, which is “You can’t change what you can’t see”.

Rise Event Processing / Active Information Picks:

1. MIT Technology Review: Startups Mine the Real-Time Web, There’s more to it than microblog posts and social network updates.

“The "real-time Web" is a hot concept these days. Both Google and Microsoft are racing to add more real-time information to their search results, and a slew of startups are developing technology to collect and deliver the freshest information from around the Web.

But there’s more to the real-time Web than just microblogging posts, social network updates, and up-to-the-minute news stories. Huge volumes of data are generated, behind the scenes, every time a person watches a video, clicks on an ad, or performs just about any other action online. And if this user-generated data can be processed rapidly, it could provide new ways to tailor the content on a website, in close to real time.”

… “Richard Tibbetts, CTO of StreamBase, explains that financial markets make up about 80 percent of his company’s customers today. Web companies are just starting to adopt the technology.

"You’re going to see real-time Web mashups, where data is integrated from multiple sources," Tibbetts says. Such a mashup could, for example, monitor second-to-second fluctuations in the price of airline tickets and automatically purchase one when it falls below a certain price.”

… Real-time applications, whether using traditional database technology or Hadoop, stand to become much more sophisticated going forward. "When people say real-time Web today, they have a narrow view of it–consumer applications like Twitter, Facebook, and a little bit of search," says StreamBase’s Tibbetts.”

2. The Economist: The World in 2010 – Big SIS (Societal Information-Technology Systems) is watching you

…“Thanks to Moore’s law (a doubling of capacity every 18 months or so), chips, sensors and radio devices have become so small and cheap that they can be embedded virtually anywhere. Today, two-thirds of new products already come with some electronics built in. By 2017 there could be 7 trillion wirelessly connected devices and objects—about 1,000 per person.

Sensors and chips will produce huge amounts of data. And IT systems are becoming powerful enough to analyse them in real time and predict how things will evolve. IBM has developed a technology it calls “stream computing”. Machines using it can analyse data streams from hundreds of sources, such as surveillance cameras and Wall Street trading desks, summarise the results and take decisions.

Transport is perhaps the industry in which the trend has gone furthest. Several cities have installed dynamic toll systems whose charges vary according to traffic flow. Drivers in Stockholm pay between $1.50 and $3 per entry into the downtown area. After the system—which uses a combination of smart tags, cameras and roadside sensors—was launched, traffic in the Swedish capital decreased by nearly 20%.

More importantly, 2010 will see a boom in “smart grids”. This is tech-speak for an intelligent network paralleling the power grid, and for applications that then manage energy use in real time. Pacific Gas & Electric, one of California’s main utilities, plans to install 10m “smart meters” to tell consumers how much they have to pay and, eventually, to switch off appliances during peak hours.

Smart technology is also likely to penetrate the natural environment. One example is the SmartBay project at Galway Bay in Ireland. The system there draws information from sensors attached to buoys and weather gauges and from text messages from boaters about potentially dangerous floating objects. Uses range from automatic alerts being sent to the harbourmaster when water levels rise above normal to fishermen selling their catch directly to restaurants, thus pocketing a better profit.

Yet it is in big cities that “smartification” will have the most impact. A plethora of systems can be made more intelligent and then combined into a “system of systems”: not just transport and the power grid, but public safety, water supply and even health care (think remote monitoring of patients). With the help of Cisco, another big IT firm, the South Korean city of Incheon aims to become a “Smart+Connected” community, with virtual government services, green energy services and intelligent buildings…”

3. Fast Company: Corventis’s PiiX Monitor Promises to Predict Heart Failure

… “The company’s first product, PiiX, is a wireless, water-resistant sensor that sticks to a patient’s chest like a large Band-Aid and monitors heart rate, respiratory rate, bodily fluids, and overall activity. It transmits the data to a central server for analysis and review by doctor and patient.

The basic technology platform has already received FDA approval, but Corventis envisions the PiiX as much more than a simple monitoring system. The company is working to generate algorithms that can predict, for instance, when a patient is on the verge of heart failure by comparing trends in his or her vital signs to other cases. "When you apply it in the real world, the algorithm begins to learn," says CEO Ed Manicka. "Not from 5 or 10 patients, but from hundreds of thousands of patients, as the system is applied across the planet."

… "What Corventis is trying to do is fundamentally create a new type of machine intelligence that serves to manage the patient’s overall health," he says. "It moves from the reactive approach of practicing medicine that is prevalent today to something that is much more proactive, preventative, and individualized."”

4. The Economist: The World in 2010 – Leadership in the information age, by Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo!

… “The second obligation that information creates for executives is to identify and mentor thought leaders. In the past, seeking out “high potential” employees typically meant looking for those who could climb the next rung of the management ladder. That remains important. But equally pressing is finding those employees who, though perhaps not the best managers, have the ability to digest and interpret information for others. Grooming these in-house ideas people helps foster a culture of openness to fresh thinking—the greatest energy an organisation can have.

The deluge of information is only going to rise. Leadership will increasingly mean leveraging that information, clarifying it, and using it to advance your strategy, engage customers and motivate employees. Business stakeholders are interested not only in your products and services, but also in your ideas.

So, welcome the information flood. Those who learn how to keep their head above it will be the most effective leaders.”

5. 2010: IT set to move from evolution to quiet revolution, predicts Progress Software

“Based on feedback from customers, as well as its own research and development, Progress Software sees five key technology trends set to shake up computing in 2010.

1. Real-time insight and business control will become a must-have, as organizations can ill-afford to lose money and customer through being slow to notice problems in delivery. In 2009, our research found that 67% of businesses only become aware of problems when customers report them. 80% of companies already have critical business events they need to monitor in real time. In 2010, insight into these events, powered by the right technology, will be essential to success.

2. Event-driven computing will accelerate, driven by business needs, and impacting both the way applications are built and how they are deployed in the enterprise. Architectures are increasingly being built around ‘events’, and this will increase to deal with both new sources of events appearing within the enterprise as well as external event sources from partners and customers.”

Filed Under: active information, business, event driven architecture, event processing, information strategies, trends

Recent Cloud Watch: Dilbert, Larry, Gartner, SOASTA, Ray Ozzie, Burton Group, IBM & more Lawyers

December 6, 2009 By brenda michelson

My most recent Cloud Watch posts on Elemental Cloud Computing:

  • IBM SOA Newsletter: SOA and Cloud, like Books and Library
  • Burton Group: Who is in control of Security across computing models
  • More on Lawyers, Clouds & Data
  • SOASTA (CloudTest) Secures $10 Million in Series C Funding
  • Gartner: Organizations to spend more on private clouds, than public offerings, through 2012 (obviously…)
  • Gartner Fellows Interview Microsoft’s Ray Ozzie on Cloud Computing
  • Dilbert evaluates cloud computing
  • George Gilbert: Why Larry, et al., seek to disrupt the disruption

Filed Under: cloud computing

Rise of Event Processing: StreamBase Named 2010 World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer

December 4, 2009 By brenda michelson

Earlier this week, I offered my one and only prediction for 2010:  “Event Processing transcends niche status, to well-recognized & adopted business technique for real-time visibility & responsiveness.”

Mark Palmer, CEO of StreamBase, stopped by to offer 9 points of CEP momentum, primarily from the Streambase point of view, but included some broader milestones, such as the recent publication of Roy Schulte and Mani Chandy’s Event Processing book. 

In addition, Mark alluded to big forthcoming announcements.  One of which, I have to imagine, is yesterday’s announcement that Streambase was named a 2010 World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer:

“StreamBase Systems, a leading provider of Complex Event Processing (CEP) technology, announced today that it has been named a 2010 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum. Candidates for this prestigious award are nominated by the world’s leading technology experts and judged by a distinguished panel appointed by the World Economic Forum. As a recipient of the Technology Pioneer award StreamBase will attend the 2010 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Recipients of the Technology Pioneer award include Google, Mozilla, PayPal and Twitter.

“We congratulate the newly selected Technology Pioneers for their remarkable achievements and welcome them to the wider community of the World Economic Forum. During these difficult times, we are certain that the technologies driven by these visionary companies will contribute to the next wave of growth, with the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit that characterizes them,” said André Schneider, Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer of the World Economic Forum.”

The World Economic Forum describes the Technology Pioneers Program as follows:

“The Technology Pioneers programme is the World Economic Forum's way of identifying and integrating those companies – normally in a start-up phase or in their first rounds of financing – from around the world that are involved in the design and development of new technologies. The innovations of these companies reflect society’s attempts to harness, adapt and use technology to change and improve the way business and society operate.”

The Technology Pioneers 2010:

“The 26 companies selected as Technology Pioneers 2010 represent some of the most innovative start-ups from around the globe whose innovations will have a critical impact on the future of business and society.

The Technology Pioneers 2010 are active in areas such as cloud computing and open source application management, social networking, financial inclusion through telecommunications, genome sequencing, responsive implants and wireless patient management solutions, waste remediation, fuel cell technology and the production of energy efficient building materials.”

A report on the 2010 Program — Embracing Disruption: Redesigning the Future — is available as a pdf.  From the introduction:

“Disruptors by definition rethink and redesign, be it business models, innovation paradigms or societal progress. By integrating the Technology Pioneers into the activities and initiatives of the World Economic Forum, notably to the Annual Meeting 2010, we are certain these disruptors will also live up to the challenge of contributing to rebuild and improve the state of the world.”

The StreamBase selection write-up:

“Traditional database systems cannot keep pace with the continuous data streams produced by global electronic transactions and sensor networks. So, in 2001, StreamBase’s future founders at MIT started work on the “Aurora” project to investigate the underlying principles required to design a new systems architecture for continuous real-time event data.

Before event processing, data had to be imported into a database, against which business intelligence queries were run to find patterns and answer questions. However, this approach did not offer actionable business intelligence due to the historical nature of databases, which produce answers long after data has been received.

Today, the deluge of continuous data streams from sensor networks and electronic transactions require immediate response. CEOs need real-time business information, governments need real-time intelligence, doctors need to track disease outbreaks in real time and traders in capital markets need to immediately identify trading opportunities. In these instances, each lost second costs money, lives or both.

Why the company is a pioneer: StreamBase’s customers span government, e-commerce and capital markets. Competitors include substantial players such as IBM, Oracle, Microsoft and Sybase; however, StreamBase has already raised US$ 37 million in venture capital and is attracting marquee customers such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Royal Bank of Canada, the online travel agency Orbitz.com and the National Security Agency.”

Not only is this award a tremendous win for StreamBase, it’s a recognition of the potential of event processing technologies and techniques “to change and improve the way business and society operate.”

Congratulations to Mark Palmer, Richard Tibbets and the entire StreamBase team.

For more information on what the award means for StreamBase, see Mark’s blog post.  To learn about how the CME Group is using StreamBase, see my interview with Steve Goldman, Director of Enterprise Architecture, CME Group.

Filed Under: active information, event driven architecture, event processing

Gartner AADI Next Week: SOA, Clouds, Events & Event Clouds

December 4, 2009 By brenda michelson

Next week, I’m attending Gartner’s Application Architecture, Development & Integration Conference (AADI) in Vegas.  I’ll be splitting my time amongst SOA, Cloud Computing and Event Processing sessions.  I haven’t built my agenda yet, but I’ll definitely be at the SOA Consortium end-user panels on Cloud Computing Use Cases and SOA Success Stories.

When possible, I’ll be blogging and tweeting from the sessions.  The conference twitter hashtag is #gartneraadi.

If you are attending and want to connect on SOA, Cloud Computing, SOA & Cloud Computing and/or Event Processing, please send me an email, or ping me on Twitter.

Filed Under: circuit, cloud computing, event driven architecture, event processing, services architecture, soa Tagged With: Gartner

2010: The Rise of Event Processing

December 1, 2009 By brenda michelson

I don’t typically engage in predictions, but here’s mine for 2010, fresh from my tweet stream:

2010: Event Processing transcends niche status, to well-recognized & adopted business technique for real-time visibility & responsiveness.

I can list tons of reasons why, but it boils down to this:  you can’t change what you can’t see.

Filed Under: active information, business, business intelligence, event driven architecture, event processing, information strategies, innovation

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Brenda M. Michelson

Brenda Michelson

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