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BEA Making Event Processing Splash
Enterprise software colossus' CEP play a sign of the technology's maturity
January 22, 2008
In a bid to raise awareness on Wall Street of its complex event processing (CEP) capabilities, Web services infrastructure giant BEA Systems has released a technology framework that guides financial firms in the use of its WebLogic Event Server.
"This new framework is designed to provide a high-performance event-processing infrastructure that minimizes processing latency and allows developers to focus on delivering new and innovative business functionality and reducing the overall cost and time to market," said John Knightly, VP of industry marketing at BEA Systems of San Jose, Calif.
The event processing guidelines, issued last week as a 27-page white paper available at the company's Web site, were developed in partnership with New York-based technology consultancy Lab49 and chipmaker Intel Corp.
Industry observers say that the attempt by an established enterprise software provider like BEA--which last week announced it will be acquired by Oracle Corp. in a deal valued at $8.5 billion--to promote the applicability of its products for CEP development is indicative of the growing market for real-time event processing technology in the capital markets. BEA announced in May that it was entering the CEP field.
"BEA is the first heavyweight player to move into the complex event processing space," said Philip Howard, analyst and director at U.K.-based Bloor Research. "Not only is this recognition of the importance of CEP but also a harbinger of things to come, as we can expect to see 800-pound gorillas in the market in due course."
"That BEA approached us about developing CEP guidelines for their product was a sign to us that the market has matured and that significant players are now entering," said Ross Hamilton, director of client engagements at Lab49.
Over the past several months, analysts have regularly speculated about companies such as BEA, IBM, Oracle and Microsoft getting into, or intensifying their efforts in, the event processing race. Until recently, the CEP market had been dominated by relatively young vendors.
With its new guidelines, BEA is encouraging firms to use its event-driven Java application server in concert with its service-oriented architecture products, and to develop new applications with Java, a programming language that has not been associated with CEP but is a familiar tool on Wall Street. The framework calls for the WebLogic Event Server to be used with WebLogic Real Time 2.0 software, described by BEA as a low-latency Java virtual machine optimized to run with Intel's quad-core Xeon 5400 processors.
The white paper offers guidance on developing applications for automated trading, market data normalization, pricing and analytics integration, and risk management. It also includes instruction on the use of development tools such as Java, Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight, and Adobe's Flex; integration techniques for proprietary C and C++ analytic libraries; approaches for the modeling of front-office applications to create CEP networks; and a design pattern for building flexible trading applications.
An event processing engine "is a very horizontal technical solution" that "does not address any particular problem that a client may have," explained Luke Flemmer, co-founder and managing director of Lab49. "Rather than having people flail around and through trial and error try to decide the best way to use BEA's CEP products, we have spent the time to think about it and walk through a number of specific-use cases." The guidelines can help BEA customers save time and money and more quickly identify the optimal configuration for "putting the CEP pieces together," he said.
