Enterprise Architecture covers, by definition, enterprise-wide modeling of both business and IT systems, and therefore should accomodate Complex Event Processing. One interesting blog shows *one* way of doing this – modeling events, event patterns and situations to “trigger processes” which can be represented as “IT services”. The conundrum here is that the “trigger” (for example, implemented in a CEP engine), is in itself a kind of IT service…
Note that one web site’s definition of Complex Event Processing claims an even closer relationship between CEP and EA, declaring CEP to be “a strategic mechanism used in designing an enterprise architecture that is based on analyzing multiple events which can have varied impact on the technology implementation of the business processes in a business enterprise and deriving an appropriate action optimized for efficiency.” To which I can only add: beware web editors that strip out punctuation!
[A friendly edit of this definition might read: CEP is "a strategic mechanism that may be used in designing an enterprise architecture and that is based on analyzing multiple events, which can have varied impact on the enterprise by deriving an the appropriate actions optimized for efficiency. CEP technology may be used for implementations of the business processes in an enterprise."
But even this edit certainly still needs work...]
Chuckle! — Because of ambiguous referents, the meaning of that gangly sentence is essentially fuzzy. Your rewrite suggests that the impact is on the enterprise – but it seems to me that the intended meaning is that the impact is on the way business processes are implemented.
How about this (with a little added emphasis to give a bit of rhythm, and leaving the main point in the strong position at the end):
“Enterprise architecture designs that use CEP are based from the ground up on the analysis of multiple events. Use of CEP in enterprise architecture impacts the way business process technologies are implemented, resulting in appropriate action, optimized for efficiency. ”
Thanks for the Friday writerly fun!