Simplified Business Event Processing presentation made by Nigel Green at the Enterprise Architecture Conference (EAC) London June 2010

2. Nigel Green
5Di Limited

3. 1986 2010

6. **** **** ****
Joint Tactical Information
Distribution System
A full picture of what’s going on ….but avoiding
information overload to any one individual or team.

7. IBM believe there are enormous financial
and strategic benefits to
implementing event-driven business
processes, because they suit the inherently
event-driven nature of many aspects of the
real world.
 Postal and express parcel companies for item tracking
 Transportation and logistics businesses to manage vehicle fleets
more effectively
 Bankers looking for fraud, money laundering, or breaches of
financial regulations
 Service providers seeking to minimize the mean-time-to-repair of
faults
 Automobile part suppliers providing parts to manufacturers for "just
in time" production.
 … and other business value networks such as:
◦ Distribution Networks - Airline Code Sharing Networks - Networked Air travel Services - Mobile
Team Collaboration - Cold Value Chains - Franchised Operations - Multi-Modal Logistics -
Collaborative Government - Seaport Security Networks - International Customs - Sensor Automation Networks -
Secure Information Networks - Transportation Networks - Traffic Networks - Field Service Collaboration - Meshed information
networks - Demand-driven Supply Chains…etc…etc
In all these cases and more, there is an inherent
requirement to handle large volumes of data in close-to
real time.

8. “A design pattern for the processing of simple events in
a way that is consumable by business users which
indicates an actionable business situation and enables
the business to respond rapidly to opportunities and
threats”.
Knowing about
events helps me deal
with problems
Business events are
before they get Knowing about
just something I’d
out-of-hand. ! events helps me
rather know about
spot
than not!!
opportunities
early?!
A pattern for creating business Situational Awareness

9. ng
4 essi
rocrvices
P e The access to information on the Web
S 1
2
The use of external information and
data processing services by people
2 and corporate IT
1
Pervasive business event visibility
3 within the enterprise
3
Visibility of business events outside
Web the enterprise
4
Enterprise
The opening-up of data from within
Enterprise IT
Applications corporate applications and making it
5
available in near-real-time to
customers and trading partners.
5

10. 1
1
1
2

11.  Event Processing Technical Society:
◦ Event: Anything that happens, or is contemplated as
happening.
◦ Simple event: An event that is not an abstraction or
composition of other events.
◦ Complex event: An event that is an abstraction of other
events ..

12. An
A ecosystem!
Database!
Think event messaging
ecosystem not database….

13. Event Publishers
to whom I’m
Subscribing
Subscribers waiting to
consume events
Searchable event …
logs
RESTful
Short event Pub-Sub
messages with API
hyperlinks to
further content
Imagine for a moment if physical objects could Tweet,
what would they tell us?

14. People, applications and appliances publish event
messages to staging queues (logs) that exist inside a
web of business-events.
Web of Business Events
Staging
Queues
collect haul sort store haul sort haul deliver fulfil
Event
Messages
Publishers

15. Customer
Operation Network
Service
Business Reporting Capacity
Enquiries
Intelligence Planning
Inter-company
Inter-operation Third Party
Integration Client-facing
Subscribers Solutions
Billing
People, applications and appliances subscribe to event
messages via their staging queues (logs) that also exist
inside a web of business-events.
Staging
Queues
collect haul sort store haul sort haul deliver fulfil
Event
Messages
Publishers

16. Components Applying
Rules
Software components (agents) apply filtering and
aggregation rules that control the flow of messages and
ensure the subscribers only see the events they’re
interested in.
collect haul sort store haul sort haul deliver fulfil

17. Event-Triggered
Business Logic
Business knowledge in here
Action
No business knowledge here but Agents
really good at moving lots of
messages around and making
them searchable Agents do
specialist tasks
that can create
new events
Other software agents execute specific business logic:
e.g. verify information, execute transaction or notify
customer

18. Staging Queues
Searching in parallel across publishers
Similar to searching on
the Web. If you need the
Get only the events that
latest event you can
search rather than are needed
subscribe.
e.g. Customer
Service Request

19. An
A ecosystem!
Database!
Think event messaging
ecosystem not database….

20. In the first quarter of 2010, 4 billion tweets per quarter were posted.
There are 600 million search queries on Twitter per day (April 2010).
Twitter gets 3 billion requests a day through its API.

22. Web Oriented Architecture:
• e.g. REST, micoblogs, RSS
• mainstream since mid’00s
Message Oriented Middleware :
• e.g. Asynchronous Transactions, Pub-
Sub Channels, Control Queues
• Mainstream mid-90s
Staged Event-Driven Architecture:
• e.g. Staged Queues, Traffic Throttling
• Since 2000
Auto ID and RFID Architecture:
• e.g. Edge-processing, EPCIS, Object ID
• Started circa 1999
A foundation for Business Situational Awareness without the need to buy or build exotic software.

24. Highly Internalised Highly Externalised
Container:
Container: Applications Container: Container:
Human Brains & Databases The Organisation Web Communities
2
4

25. Highly Internalised Highly Externalised
Container:
Container: Applications Container: Container:
Human Brains & Databases The Organisation Web Communities
Blind Blind
Blind Blind
Spot Spot Spot Spot
Blind Blind
Spot Spot
Blind
Spot
Not all business Useful Information and
Shadow IT is Applications & services might be out there…
used to Databases are processes automated by
support gaps built to meet IT and customer/
partner information Is my business visible to these
in corporate IT vertical needs communities?
limited
2
Information is either not visible or not available outside its container.
5

26. Highly Internalised Highly Externalised
Values
Container: Values
Container: Applications Container: Container:
Human Brains & Databases The Organisation Web Communities
Methods Barrier Policies Methods Barrier Policies
Trust Trust
Values
Methods Barrier Policies
Trust
Differing values, trust issues, poorly considered policies and narrowly-
2
6
focused change methods strengthen barriers

27. Events
Trust Values
Systems
Behaviour
Content Policies
VPEC-T

28. http://www.morguefile.com/archive/?display=199341&

29. state machine versus event
ecosystem
event payload content
edge processing object identity
duplicate event strategies
event network control
message handling mechanisms
configurability versus synchronous eventual
unintended
consequences transactions consistency versus
strong consistency
information confidence marking value network analysis
event granularity versus six sigma
fuzzy versus idempotency
precise events event taxonomies

31. ç

32. 1. Can you see an opportunity for improved Situational Awareness
in your organisation?
2. How would you design information systems if:
◦ every business activity could make process state changes
broadly available
◦ physical objects could tell you their whereabouts and status
…in near-real-time?

33. nigel.green@5dinnovation.com
www.5dinnovation.com
Twitter: 5Di
Twitter hash tag: #sbep
Simplicity By Design