In a recent post, Louis Lovas of Progress Apama explains why the first generation CEP vendors don’t have many, if any, cloud deployments.  Here’s a quote from his post:

Typical of event processing applications that do things are those in Capital Markets like algorthmic trading, pricing and market making. These applications perform some business function, often critcal in nature in their own right. Save connectivity to data sources and destinations, they are the key ingredient or the only ingredient to a business process.  In the algo world CEP systems tap into the firehose of data, and the data rates in these markets (Equities, Futures & Options, etc.) is increasing at a dizzying pace. CEP-based trading systems are focused on achieiving the lowest latency possible. Investment banks, hedge funds, and others in the arms race demand the very best in hardware and software platforms to shave microseconds off each trade. Anything that gets in the (latency) way is quickly shed.

Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this? (Romeo’s reply…)

Louis goes on to describe additional possible reasons for the current lack of CEP in the cloud.  Amongst them he cites that many businesses have not migrated their key business processes to the Cloud, and that having those business processes in the Cloud is a requirement for CEP in the cloud.

Without citing potential evidence to the contrary, I think that Louis’s point is valid.  It’s valid because Progress Apama’s current customer base, like Streambase and Sybase, is predominately comprised of and focused upon Capital Markets participants actively engaged in high frequency, or algo, trading.  And I agree with Louis that it currently doesn’t make any sense to move algo trading to the cloud, no matter which, if any, of the 21 definitions of cloud you identify with.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

We’re busy hooking up some big data visualization to our TwitYourl – and we’ll be sharing that shortly.  And although TwitYourl could hardly be explained as a key business process, using Cloud Event Processing based Continuous Intelligence can certainly help refine and focus those business processes.

• Event Processing in the Cloud – DataSift is a Big Proof Point