Progress ESP Platforms empowers users to monitor, analyse, and act on realtime event streams

Johannesburg — 07 Nov 2005 — The Progress Real Time Division, an operating unit of Progress Software and a provider of realtime products for event stream processing, data management, data access and synchronisation, has announced the Progress ESP Platform. As the industry's first fully integrated, general purpose event stream processing (ESP) platform, Progress ESP delivers tools that allow business users to create applications that can monitor realtime event streams, detect and analyse event patterns, and take action in milliseconds.

Already in use at financial services organisations in the US and Europe, the Progress ESP Platform extends event stream processing to a wide range of new markets. Now able to exploit the power and flexibility of the Progress event platform are applications such as RFID-enabled asset tracking and business activity monitoring (BAM) for realtime visibility of business processes, enterprise risk management, monitoring and control of telecommunications, industrial, and utility networks, and energy trading.

"The Progress ESP platform has proven itself to meet the fast-paced demands of financial service organisations where algorithm-driven trading programs must be created in hours, not days, by IT and business users alike. And they must capture, analyse and act on tens of thousands of data points per second, responding within milliseconds," says Mark Palmer, vice president, event stream processing, Progress Real Time Division. "We now extend that same field-proven technology outside financial services to meet the growing demand for ESP applications in other markets."

"There are important financial and strategic benefits to implementing event-driven business processes," said Roy W. Schulte, vice president distinguished analyst at Gartner. "The most powerful forms of event-driven applications require event stream processing. Companies will need event stream processing to implement certain types of systems for competitive advantage and regulatory compliance. Event stream processing will help companies achieve the visibility they need to compete in a complex, fast-shifting, event-driven world."

The Progress ESP platform features Event Modeler, a unique graphical environment that enables business users to quickly compose, deploy and evolve highly sophisticated, realtime event processing scenarios without the need to resort to low level coding. Through a graphical state diagram, event processing scenarios can express event patterns that include time as an element, and then analyse that data and trigger action instantly.

Event Modeler includes a standard set of event process SmartBlocks, packages of reusable event processing logic that enable users to capture, reuse and extend business intelligence in event scenarios. Dashboards provide a Web-based user interface for the event processing scenarios that allow users to monitor operating scenarios and receive alerts whenever an action needs to be taken.

Once developed in the Event Modeler, event processing scenarios are injected into the Progress ESP Event Manager for execution and management. Event Manager consists of one or more event correlation engines that monitor inbound event streams for patterns and match conditions defined by the Event Modeler. Event Manager employs a patented multi-dimensional filtering mechanism that quickly sifts through multiple event data streams, detects patterns, and identifies appropriate responses in milliseconds. Multiple correlator instances can be configured to distribute events for load balancing and fault tolerance.

About Progress Software South Africa

Progress Software South Africa is a subsidiary of US-based Progress Software Corporation, the world leader in the embedded database market. The company provides the underlying software technology and services required for successfully developing, deploying, integrating, and managing e-business solutions. Progress actively pursues innovative technologies and new business opportunities that allow companies to make an effective transition to true e-business environments. Progress's OpenEdge platform enables its partners to deliver lowest cost-of-ownership applications that are rapidly implemented and easily integrated within and across the extended enterprise. The company's extensive partner base includes more than 2 000 application partners and application service providers who supply more than $5 billion in Progress-based applications and services annually. Over 50 000 organisations across 100 countries — including 70% of the Fortune 100 — rely on Progress technology.

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