Gartner BPM Summit Recap
I attended Gartner’s BPM Summit in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. After some deserved time off from my blog, I finally found the time to tell you more about the most impressive moments. By far, Keith Ferrazzi’s talk was the WOW experience for the whole audience. However, today, I want to share with you another highlight that was more inline with decision management: Complex Event Processing (CEP). Jim Sinur and Roy Schulte co-presented on “Living an Eventful Life With Agile BPM”. It was absolutely fantastic. Their explanation and positioning for CEP is the best that I’ve ever seen.
What is Complex Event Processing?
CEP is a discipline for tracking and analyzing streams of data in real-time. The goal of CEP is to identify events which are meaningful patterns in the data that signify opportunities or threats in a system. CEP technologies enable organizations to define and monitor events and are used in fraud detection, internet operations, stock market trading systems, and more. Traditional insights rely on historical data. Organizations typically stored data in a database which is later queried and analyzed. CEP allows organizations to draw insights in real-time before the data is stored (or without the data ever being stored).
CEP is Part of the Nervous System
Over the years, I have seen many presentations and articles on CEP. Unfortunately, most do a terrible job at explaining the discipline’s purpose and how it works with other disciplines. Some go as far as comparing CEP with business process management (BPM) and business rules. Often, I hear CEP is better business rules or CEP is broader than BPM. I find these statements unhelpful. Therefore, years ago, I came up with my own analogy and blogged about it: CEP is part of the nervous system.
Continuing with the body theme, here’s how the three technologies work with each other:
- CEP technology is like the nerves. They sense what’s happening locally in the body.
- A business process management system (BPMS) is like the spinal cord: It sends messages between the brain and the body’s nerves.
- A business rules management system (BRMS) is like the brain. It receives timely information from the nerves and makes decisions (carried out by the rest of the body).
Because of my background in life sciences, I really liked this analogy. However, biology is quite complex so my analogy was not as straight-forward as I had hoped.
CEP Explained by Gartner
Rather than using an analogy, Jim and Roy went straight to a topology discussion and pulled it off very elegantly. While I don’t have the rights to copy their materials, I’ll try to describe it as well as I can. If you have access to their talk, I highly recommend you download their presentation slides.
In a nutshell, they described a layer of execution as “Runtime BPM Technology.” This includes the following:
- Workflow engine
- Orchestration engine
- Business rules engine (yes, BPMS and BRMS go hand-in-hand)
A traditional process flow would invoke any one of these engines, depending on the step: application, human interaction, decisioning step.
CEP introduces a new Intelligence Layer. At first, I wondered why BRMS wouldn’t also be included in this layer since BRMS like SMARTS™ are quite intelligent! However, by intelligence, they mean “gathering intelligence,” and in the case of CEP, in real-time.
CEP Understands the Environment
CEP technologies “sense” events from sensors, applications, and other sources. These events are analyzed and dispatched to the Runtime BPM Layer. Knowing that “something” is going on, the process can adjust the flow to accommodate the new piece of information. This fits with my analogy that CEP technologies are nerves. Like the nerves, these sensors are “always on” as Steve Hendrick put it. They receive tons of information 24×7 and will react when they detect a pattern of interest. Patterns can include spikes, drops, and trends in activity.
Let’s use a concrete example. A company leverages a BPMS to automate Collections. Joe is a customer that hasn’t been able to pay his bills for a few months. Here’s how the company would handle his case:
- Joe’s case is dispatched to an agent. The agent tries to call him per the script.
- After 3 failed attempts, the agent logs that he hasn’t been able to reach him.
- A “friendly” letter is sent to Joe.
- After a couple of weeks, a “mean” letter is sent to Joe.
- etc.
At any point in time in this process, Joe can call this company back to remediate. Or, in the worst case, Joe’s relative can inform the company that Joe passed away. These situations should stop Joe’s case from continuing through this process. While they could be coded as exceptions into the BPMS, these situations are better managed through CEP.
CEP Understands the System
In addition to sensing external information, CEP technologies can be used to sense internal information. More specifically, CEP can be used to collect and process events produced by the System itself. With this use case, CEP can complement your traditional Business Activity Monitoring (BAM).
- First, you can publish events in real-time. CEP combines the convenience of Business Intelligence dashboards with the real-time capabilities of your BPMS. This is extremely powerful when combined with the notification capabilities we talked about yesterday.
- Second, you can do useful pre-processing. Calculations and correlations can be injected in your dashboards to further visualize patterns and trends.
- Lastly, you can combine system insights with external intelligence. For example, through CEP, you can determine how your call center volumes have been affected in the 3 hours that follow a 7+ earthquake.
The sky’s the limit!
CEP is Not a Magic Pill
However, like all technologies, CEP is not the end all. I like how Jim and Roy points out Gartner’s Peak of Inflated Expectations in their legendary Hype Cycle.
View Carlos’ thoughts on CEP and my thoughts on SAP and Sybase
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