Event-Driven Architecture Overview

A great read on events and application of them within an Event-Driven Architecture by Brenda Michelson in her Elemental Links blog. I agree with everything she’s laid out in her posting. Events, complex event processing (CEP) and the associated business rules build the foundation for managing the business in real-time with business service management (BSM), business activity monitoring (BAM) and similar concepts and solutions.

It’s critical for those within IT Operations (NOC, help desk, network and systems management fields, etc.) to learn how to think outside of the box when it comes to events. The common stereotype for most in IT Operations is that an event is associated with somthing bad happening. This is just plain wrong. Events can and should be used to communicate all kinds of messages, whether related to the infrastructure you’re managing or to somthing completely unrelated such as a process, activity, or anything important within the business environment. Use the investments your company has made in creative ways. Events don’t have to only originate from an SNMP agent, system agent or other infrastructure element. Work with non-traditional groups within your organization to find ways that they can generate events that can be processed and help communicate various messages within the organization, drive a dashboard, create a help desk ticket, automate a process, etc. The use of events to manage the business in real-time will separate the successful companies from the unsuccessful (or inefficient) ones in the future!

This is a must read posting! I look forward to reading the rest of her site and future postings on this topic and the Business-Driven Architecture!