This book is organized and laid out to provide information in quickly understandable chapters and in sections within chapters. Each chapter stands on its own and provides a usable body of information on an aspect of the real-time enterprise. Chapters includes diagrams, tables, and lists to illustrate and summarize key points and real-world case studies and executive interviews to provide further insight into the subject matter presented in the chapter. Readers of this book will: Gain a clear picture of how organizations can profit from use of real-time operations Appreciate the theory, technology, and business practices that underpin the real-time enterprise Learn a pragmatic and efficient approach for developing real-time systems in their own organizations The author, Michael Hugos, is the chief information officer of Network Services Company, a $7 billion dollar distribution organization. He has over 20 years experience in applying technology to meet business challenges and he holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. His discussion of the real-time enterprise is a blend of both theoretical and practical perspectives based on his years of applying real-time concepts to actual business situations. He is also the author of Essentials of Supply Chain Management.

Successful management teams can identify the cost and return derived from the implementation of new technology, and they can properly apply the technology toward gaining a competitive advantage. IT and business managers alike need a resource that enables them to prepare for future operating conditions, identify beneficial solutions, and use high te

Improving Business Agility with EDA Going beyond SOA, enterprises can gain even greater agility by implementing event-driven architectures (EDAs) that automatically detect and react to significant business events. However, EDA planning and deployment is complex, and even experienced SOA architects and developers need expert guidance. In Event-Driven Architecture, four leading IT innovators present both the theory of EDA and practical, step-by-step guidance to implementing it successfully. The authors first establish a thorough and workable definition of EDA and explore how EDA can help solve many of today’s most difficult business and IT challenges. You’ll learn how EDAs work, what they can do today, and what they might be able to do as they mature. You’ll learn how to determine whether an EDA approach makes sense in your environment and how to overcome the difficult interoperability and integration issues associated with successful deployment. Finally, the authors present chapter-length case studies demonstrating how both full and partial EDA implementations can deliver exceptional business value. Coverage includes How SOA and Web services can power event-driven architectures The role of SOA infrastructure, governance, and security in EDA environments EDA core components: event consumers and producers, message backbones, Web service transport, and more EDA patterns, including simple event processing, event stream processing, and complex event processing Designing flexible stateless events that can respond to unpredictable customers, suppliers, and business partners Addressing technical and business challenges such as project management and communication EDA at work: real-world applications across multiple verticals Hugh Taylor is a social software evangelist for IBM Lotus Software. He coauthored Understanding Enterprise SOA and has written extensively on Web services and SOA. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. Angela Yochem is an executive in a multinational technology company and is a recognized thought leader in architecture and large-scale technology management. Les Phillips, VP, enterprise architecture, at SunTrust Banks Inc., is responsible for defining the strategic and business IT foundation for many areas of the enterprise. Frank Martinez, EVP, product strategy, at SOA Software, is a recognized expert on distributed, enterprise application, and infrastructure platforms. He has served as senior operating executive for several venture-backed firms and helped build Intershop Communications into a multibillion-dollar public company.

Speed as a factor for success Our modern industrial society lives life in the fast lane. The catchwords “faster”, “shorter”, “more powerful” reflect what we experience in almost all aspects of our lives. Whether at home or at work, we are constantly on the move and in a rush. In our private lives we find rapid exchange of inf- mation most entertaining and we are fascinated by the wide range of inf- mation that pours in on us from all around the world, mainly via the new media. It gives us the feeling of being a part of the action everywhere and all the time. Seldom are we aware that the only reason this flood of inf- mation, often referred to as “overstimulation”, does not lead to overkill is that we manage to organize our time effectively. There are many parallels to this in the business world. Here too, a great deal of time pressure is exerted from outside; goals are set ever higher and deadlines become tighter. In other words, demands on our time demand faster reaction. Crucial information travels around the globe – across all time zones – in a matter of seconds. In fact, instead of CET or CEST, it would make sense to have a single time zone for the worldwide network called GST for Global Simultaneous Time. In business more so than in p- vate life, we are almost constantly online.

"The Real-Time Contact Center" is a practical guide to building a service infrastructure that will simultaneously exceed customers' expectations and build revenues.

In todayís competitive and highly dynamic environment, analyzing data to understand how the business is performing, to predict outcomes and trends, and to improve the effectiveness of business processes underlying business operations has become cri- cal. The traditional approach to reporting is no longer adequate, users now demand easy-to-use intelligent platforms and applications capable of analyzing real-time bu- ness data to provide insight and actionable information at the right time. The end goal is to improve the enterprise performance by better and timelier decision making, - abled by the availability of up-to-date, high-quality information. As a response, the notion of "real-time enterprise" has emerged and is beginning to be recognized in the industry. Gartner defines it as “using up-to-date information, getting rid of delays, and using speed for competitive advantage is what the real-time enterprise is all about. . . Indeed, the goal of the real-time enterprise is to act on events as they happen. ” Although there has been progress in this direction and many com- nies are introducing products toward making this vision a reality, there is still a long way to go. In particular, the whole lifecycle of business intelligence requires new techniques and methodologies capable of dealing with the new requirements imposed by the real-time enterprise.

Find out how Events Processing (EP) works and how it can work for you Business Event Processing: An Introduction and Strategy Guide thoroughly describes what EP is, how to use it, and how it relates to other popular information technology architectures such as Service Oriented Architecture. Explains how sense and response architectures are being applied with tremendous results to businesses throughout the world and shows businesses how they can get started implementing EP Shows how to choose business event processing technology to suit your specific business needs and how to keep costs of adopting it down Provides practical guidance on how EP is best integrated into an overall IT strategy and how its architectural styles differ from more conventional approaches This book reveals how to make the most advantageous use of event processing technology to develop real time actionable management information from the events flowing through your company's networks or resulting from your business activities. It explains to managers and executives what it means for a business enterprise to be event-driven, what business event processing technology is, and how to use it.