Complex Event Processing Vendors Flounder

[DLuckham]

Here you go .... CEP is floundering:

Independent CEP (Complex/Event Processing) vendors continue to flounder, at least outside the financial services and national intelligence markets.
* StreamBase once planned to conquer the world, making an impact as big as database management's. Now it has retreated into niche markets.
* Progress Software, a decent-sized company, put a large fraction of its energy into Apama. Little has happened outside the financial service sector.
* Coral8 has some great-sounding ideas. But Coral8 now has merged into Aleri, basically a financial-markets specialist.
* Mike Franklin says some ambitious things on behalf of Truviso, but I haven't noticed much traction there either.

Now, in case you're wondering who this guy is...

Curt Monash runs Monash Research

How good is his research???
BTW, Mark Palmer has already weighed in, but more to criticize the Aleri/Coral8 merger than to question Mr. Monash's opinions.
So, what do you think?
- David

[PVincentTIBCO]

http://www.dbms2.com/2009/03/09/independent-cep-vendors-continue-to-flounder/

So far as I can tell, this is a new version of a repeated story. A clever alternative to relational DBMS was invented. It proved superior in some specific applications and vertical markets. It failed to achieve much broader adoption. Initial high hopes got dashed, companies failed to grow rapidly, and shareholders grew tired.

Presumably Curt sees CEP as a threat/competitor to DBMS technology. Ignoring Sybase buying Coral8 code and Oracle work in this area. I'm not aware of anyone claiming "CEP is an alternative to a relational RDBMS" - except maybe as an application platform for processing events (where RDBMS could be seen as a square hole for an event round peg).

Just my 2c.

[opher]

David. The web is big, and full of bloggers, not all of them deserve attention. I have looked briefly at the Blog of this guy - it seems that he does not know what CEP is, and he does not know that he does not know what CEP is...

cheers,

Opher

[woolfel]

David. The web is big, and full of bloggers, not all of them deserve attention. I have looked briefly at the Blog of this guy - it seems that he does not know what CEP is, and he does not know that he does not know what CEP is...

cheers,

Opher

I don't know what CEP is either, but seeing the consolation and economy, it sure looks like CEP is hurting. I don't think one needs to know "what CEP is" to see the CEP industry is suffering along with everyone else in the software industry. What company and industry hasn't been affected by the current economy? Most have felt some effects, while others are bleeding badly.

peter

[LouisLovas]

Pardon me if I beg to differ. We (Progress Apama) had a banner year in 2008 despite the poor economy. We've invested heavily in both the technology and staff (sales, presales, engineering, consultants, marketing, etc.). While it's true a lot of the Apama business is in Capital Markets we have many customers outside of finance in telco, logistics, etc. CEP is a not struggling (IMHO). On the contrary, one can wind the clock back just a few years ago and the term CEP was unrecognizable in our industry now its ubiquitous. Journalists and analysts write about CEP all the time both directly and in comparison to other technologies (i.e. Forrester's CEP vs. BRMS).

Consolidation is the natural order of things for any new technology (i.e Oracle -> BEA, IBM -> AptSoft). Aleri/Coral8 is no surprise we should have expected it, anticipated it.

[opher]

Hi Peter. The recent (December 2008) IDC report says: We estimate that CEP software will grow 65% in 2008 to approximately $140
million, making CEP the fastest-growing segment of middleware for the second
year in a row.
I don't know how much this estimate is consistent with reality - but analysts that make assessments about an area, typically spend some times and efforts to learn what it is about, and who are the players. I agree with Louie that acquisition/merge is a natural evolution of any area, watching other areas like BRMS or DBMS this has already happened.

[DLuckham]

Opher,

it seems that he does not know what CEP is, and he does not know that he does not know what CEP is...

That's why I put him on the Forum, in the hope there would be substantive refutations. (Notice the uses cases quoted in yesterdays report on the website!)
Do you have a pointer to the IDC report you quote from?
thanks
- David

[DLuckham]

Peter....

I don't know what CEP is either

Hope you're joking, .... but see what you think of http://complexevents.com/?p=399
- David

[woolfel]

Peter....

I don't know what CEP is either

Hope you're joking, .... but see what you think of http://complexevents.com/?p=399
- David

Honestly, I don't believe I have a good or even an accurate understanding of CEP. I purchased "the power of events" last year and read through several chapters. About half way through I found myself disagreeing with many of the things stated in the book. After that I stopped reading because I couldn't resolve the differences between what the book describes and my own experience.

In my own struggle to get a handle on CEP, I looked at prior art in temporal logic, pattern matching, ai and other fields. I even went as far as to implement temporal logic extension to my rule engine and document my findings. At the end though, I'm still left with the feeling that I don't "get" CEP. I still don't understand why events are defined as "persistent and immutable". There many things related to CEP that I don't understand and that's not me trying to be funny or modest.

To me, there's far more open questions than answers. The question of a standard or common event processing language is still a huge open issue in my mind. Perhaps I'm just bogged down by practical implementation matters, which have nothing to do with the definition of CEP. For better or worse, I'm a developer and that's how I approach things.

peter

[PatternStorm]

Gents,

it seems we are getting a bit chippy => http://www.dbms2.com/2009/03/20/the-cep ... it-chippy/

Regards,
PatternStorm