In a conversation with a vendor in the application portfolio management space the other day, we got on the subject of what "Cloud" means to them and by extension to their current and future customer base. My colleagues have written extensively on what it may mean to Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, HP and others, and our conversation began discussing the potential of cloud-computing from a vendor perspective - for instance:

The mobile channel is increasingly relevant in business strategies, application architectures and applications of financial services firms. Consequently, we are all aware that the headline represents a strong exaggeration. So, why this statement? Is there any substance in it that application architects, application developers, and enterprise architects need to consider? Interactions with a number of banks indicate that the answer is yes.

I want to develop a Web application - a really good Web app. The kind of Web app that will make me so rich that I can buy an $9.4 million co-op over looking Central Park, a Yacht registered in Monaco, and hire an architect to build my dream-house west of Boston that is a combo of Buckminster Fuller, FLW, and MTV cribs.

The founding Fathers of the United States understood all too well the importance of complex events when on July 4th, 1776 they wrote:

"When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to...etcetera, etcetera, and etcetera".

Similarly, many of today's business and IT leaders understand the importance of reacting to business events as they occur in real-time and how that can dramatically change the performance and agility of their business.

Event processing, often called "complex event processing" (CEP) is a hot new enterprise middleware category. CEP answers the question: "What is happening right now in our business"? Sometimes the answer is as simple as ordering more products when the inventory dips below safety stock, but often it involves recognizing patterns of business events that foretell critical business situations that require immediate action.

CEP platforms analyze streams of data as they flow from live sources such as transaction flows, click streams, market data feeds, and myriad other sources of data swirling around inside a business environment. The platforms then prompt either downstream applications or people to react to the information by resetting processing priorities, changing online sales strategies, buying and selling stocks, or performing some other action.