The Instantly Responsive Enterprise: Integrating Business Process Management and Complex Event Processing

Over the last several years, business process management (BPM) has evolved from a mysterious alchemy of arc-and-bubble graphics to a mainstream tool of the trade that integrates IT technologies for business advantage. In parallel, complex event processing (CEP) has expanded beyond being applicable only in the isolated domain of foreign exchange trading and is now improving a broad range of processes—from transportation logistics to customer relationship management. Put BPM and CEP together and you get intelligent business processes that react to changing business conditions in real time, providing continuous visibility—in short, an instantly responsive enterprise.
The goal of CEP is to discover information contained in the events detected throughout all layers of the organization, understand the information at the macro level as comprising a "complex event," determine its impact, and then act upon it in real time. BPM helps organizations ensure that business processes are optimally defined, managed, executed, and monitored.