Microsoft Readies CEP Tests
Microsoft CEP offering slated for launch in 2010
June 22, 2009
Microsoft said that July is the month when it will kick-start testing and evaluation efforts with several financial service firms--yet to be named--for a new complex event processing platform that the Seattle-based software giant is in the process of developing in-house. The complex event processing offering is scheduled for an official launch in the first half of 2010.
The move makes sense as Microsoft is a prominent technology provider to financial services firms and emerging complex event process-ing (CEP) technology--which continues to show that it can help trading firms and global exchanges cope with the dizzying amounts of real-time and event-oriented data they must analyze and process on a daily basis--has gained the attention of capital markets firms.
The testing effort among Wall Street firms is timely as well: Despite recent cut-backs in IT budgets, the CEP sector has remained quite active due, in large part, to the fact that the technology can be used to capture enterprisewide views of market and credit risk at a time when regulators under the Obama administration are pressuring financial firms to regularly monitor this type of data.
Microsoft's new CEP platform, according to Stevan Vidich, an industry technology strategist for worldwide financial services at Microsoft, will offer a key benefit to the financial sector's budget-constrained IT departments: Competitive pricing.
"Existing CEP products tend to be specialty, niche products that can be fairly costly. We think we can offer a far more cost-effective CEP solution," said Vidich, who added that at this early stage in the platform's roll-out he could not be specific about reduced price points or discounts.
Vidich also said that aside from price, another key differentiator for Microsoft's new CEP platform--which has yet to be named and is being developed under the auspices of Microsoft's SQL Server Group--will be the fact that developers will be able to work with familiar products such as the Microsoft Visual Studio , the .NET framework and LINQ (Language Integrated Query) to write event-driven, CEP-based applications and will appreciate the ease of integration with other, well known Microsoft products. "With other CEP vendors you need to learn an entirely new language before you can build an application and if you want to run queries on streaming data, every vendor has a different variant," Vidich said. "We will allow developers to use what is already widely accepted and make it possible for developers to use existing skills when building CEP applications."
Crowded market
In entering the CEP arena, Microsoft will find a crowded market, where CEP leaders include Aleri of Chicago; Progress Software of Bedford, Mass.; and StreamBase Systems of Lexington, Mass. All have developed specialized products and capabilities--for example, for algorithmic trading and real-time risk management purposes--to serve the high speed, event processing needs of financial service firms. As well, CEP offerings are now offered by enterprise software players such as IBM which acquired CEP provider AptSoft), Oracle (which acquired BEA Systems and its CEP platform), Sybase Systems and Tibco.
Analysts say they are not surprised by Microsoft's move, particularly in light of the arrival of key Microsoft competitors--IBM and Oracle--in the CEP market last year. However, it remains to be seen if Microsoft will be successful in its CEP efforts.
