Day 1 Session 4: Real World, Real Time, Instant Results

Presenter: Jeff Henry, Director of Software Standards at IBM

The session was very high level and revolved around the importance of standards and the use of them to enable and leverage the business goals of today.  The concept is that "Real World" processing leverages the innovation and agility of three key trends.  Event Processing, Real Time Information, and Web 2.0.   The concept of Business Event Processing (BEP) was presented as bridging the gap between Business and IT.  It encompass the ability to extract events from multiple sources, derive new events through aggregation and information enrichment, and detecting "business situations" based on event patterns.  The sweet spot of the presentation was where SOA meets BEP.  BEP extends SOA to achieve this. 

The focus then changed to the importance of standards and openness.  Standards enable interoperability like never before.  They also reduce complexity and help teams work well together.   Standards come in three flavors, the core technology standards like IP and XML, Horizontal Industry standards like HR and Accounting, and the emerging Industry-Specific standards like Healthcare and Banking.  As standards emerge, they go through a path that starts with a need, followed by an initiator, which is then adopted by a group, and finally embraced by a standards body.

More information can be found on IBM Information Management Software at ibm.com/software/data

-mw