Calling all VARs

Greetings from Raleigh on January 26, 2009

I suppose an introduction is in order. My name is David Olson. Long time Progress person and I tend to float between technical and business roles in the company. Recently crossed over into the Apama world to focus on opportunities other than Capital Markets, which brings me to an interesting observation…

I've spent a lot of time working with our Application Partners (formerly known as VARs) and over the past few years I've made an effort to push CEP concepts to key partners. Many are in industries that have a few event streams that are ripe for the picking. Manufacturing, logistics, telco, and retail certainly rise to the top of the list. All tend to agree that there are events streaming through their customer's infrastructure and there may be a potential use case there but, few know what to do about it - and I suppose that's understandable.

For 50 years or so, we've concentrated our business application development on transforming traditional business processes into software. MRP/ERP has certainly led the call – but for the most part, ERP is done. And like the Holy Grail in the Monty Python movie it's getting harder to sell ERP because, you see, we’ve already got one.

Operational Effectiveness through CEP is the next frontier for business application software and I believe that it will shake up business processing the same way ERP did in the past. This isn't to say that ERP is not necessary, it's just that underlying platforms are not conducive for the "in the moment" nature of CEP solutions. In fact, the two should live comfortably side-by-side.

So VARs, this is your call. The infrastructure is mature, the technology is available, and your customers are ready. There's a new seed you can plant that can bring additional opportunity to your existing solutions. Take a look at what Manuvis has done with their FactoryMRI solution set. Real-time dashboards - right on their home page. CEP's a big part of what they do and they're making waves.

You should be next.

-DO