In the previous article with this title I discussed the consolidation of the MDM market. The same thing is happening in the CEP (complex event processing) market. However, here matters are somewhat different. In this sector, first IBM acquired AptSoft, then Aleri merged with Coral8, Informatica got AgentLogic and, most recently, Sybase has acquired the assets of Aleri (along with Coral8).
In the case of IBM, this means that that company has two major CEP engines: AptSoft, which is primarily used in conjunction with business process management, and InfoSphere Streams, which is the high-end, more serious CEP product. Informatica, on the other hand, primarily acquired AgentLogic to support event-driven data integration, though AgentLogic is still being targeted at government implementations where it has historically been strong.
Sybase is different, and it now has three CEP engines since it also has its own Sybase CEP product that works in conjunction with Sybase RAP (real-time analytics platform). However, before Sybase released its own CEP engine it partnered with, amongst others, Aleri and, in fact, Aleri has been a Sybase VAR for a number of years, so the acquisition is not simply tactical and to gain market share (though it undoubtedly does that) but it also has a more strategic rationale.
The point here is that these acquisitions were actually done for different reasons, at least in part. However, the Sybase purchase, in particular, raises interesting questions. For one thing, it means that Streambase is pretty much the only pure play left in the capital markets sector, which now looks like being carved up by Sybase, Streambase and Progress between them. But is Streambase big enough to continue on its own? A merger with Vertica seems likely at some point.
However, this is not the whole point. This acquisition pretty much marks the end of consolidation within the CEP capital markets sector. However, there remains the infrastructure market, exemplified by AptSoft and AgentLogic, and it is also notable that Progress recently bought Saviion and the company is likely to integrate this with Progress Apama to compete in this space.
However, perhaps most interesting is the RFID and sensor space, where there are other active CEP vendors like Starview and Event Zero. This is starting to ramp up and, interestingly, Sybase has stated that it plans to extend beyond capital markets in due course, and IBM has already done so. Progress has some customers here already and obviously this represents an opportunity for Streambase also.
So, what we have is a partial consolidation in the CEP market for one particular sector. It will be some time before that spreads into other areas, where markets are still in their infancy.
