Comments on recent mentions of CEP by Gartner

I’ve recently read the Gartner Hype Cycle report that mentions Complex Event Processing (CEP) (Gartner document number G00168300, 16 July 2009), having first read Opher’s recent post on the subject.

In its first mention of CEP in a Hype Cycle (I think), Gartner puts CEP as a transformational technology, just approaching the peak of inflated expectation and 5 to 10 years from mainstream adoption. CEP community members will naturally be enthused that CEP is slowly but surely getting more press.

But in this report, I see the same old problems with defining CEP and making it relevant to a broad audience.  While sales of some CEP products have grown steadily over the past few years, the EPTS has a long way to go in defining and communicating the value of CEP.

For example, here is the best (only) use case that Gartner could come up with to communicate the value of CEP:

sales managers who receive an alert message containing a complex event that says,

“Today’s sales volume is 30% above average” grasp the situation more quickly than if they were

shown the hundreds of individual sales transactions (base events) that contributed to that

complex event.

… sales managers who receive an alert message containing a complex event that says, ”Today’s sales volume is 30% above average” grasp the situation more quickly than if they were shown the hundreds of individual sales transactions (base events) that contributed to that complex event.

Has anyone noticed that sales managers already get this information?!?! Are we saying that “CEP will produce sales volume reports”? That’s transformational? This use case doesn’t communicate anything new!

Here’s another quote:

Business activity monitoring (BAM) relies on CEP to provide the information it needs to operate.

I really wish that I were taking this sentence out of context, as an excuse to rag on how CEP is misunderstood. But I’m not – the report talks about CEP and BAM, without giving one piece of information to tell you what is the difference between the two. Does this mean that anyone who’s got BAM, already has CEP?

I’m sorry to say this, but the EPTS is failing to convey the value of CEP to Gartner. Reading the reports on CEP, there is no easily followed trail to that “ah ha” moment, which convinces users that it will be transformational.

The EPTS is on its way to positive things, but it is making much more (although still fairly slow) progress on forming its internal community than on communicating to the world about CEP.