The fictitious company "Acme Toys" could be used to illustrate an example of how event-driven SOA can increase visibility and revenue. As the holidays approached, the company continuously reviewed its customer order data in real time, using data feeds that were generated at point-of-sale retail outlets and fed into the central business activity monitoring system. On the first day of its holiday sale, Acme found that "driving" games were selling poorly and that demand for adventure games was almost double what had been predicted. Based on this insight, the retailer alerted its manufacturers, distributors and point-of-sale locations. These supply chain partners revised production orders, prepared to ship increased volumes of adventure game videos and got ready to stock adventure game videos.

As a result, the manufacture of adventure games was increased and production of driving games was decreased, making the better-selling games available for sale at the retailer's outlets. The retailer also instructed its distributors to discount the price of the driving games, thereby increasing sales of an otherwise slow-moving product. In reading the signals in real time, Acme Toys was able to clearly understand market demand and respond instantly—maximizing profitability in the bargain.

The benefits of an event-driven SOA approach are clear. By enabling the instantly responsive enterprise, event-driven SOA can help increase revenues by boosting customer satisfaction, managing exceptions efficiently, enhancing product and service offerings, and improving competitive agility. Operating costs shrink through increased value chain visibility and reduced customer acquisition costs. As a result, market leadership grows through faster time to market and superior support and service.

Looking at Event-Driven SOA Holistically

To help their enterprises become instantly responsive, CIOs must begin making the transition to event-driven computing. The first step is to consider a complete event-driven SOA foundation that not only addresses today's business problems but can also be scaled up and out to handle tomorrow's challenges.

CIOs must build this foundation using a platform approach to event processing. Although point solutions can seem cost-effective, they may not scale to handle the increased throughput, responsiveness and complexity that will surely be required in the future. Only when a CIO creates the appropriate framework, infrastructure, architecture and data feeds can the IT organization support the enterprise and its revenue growth without pain.

Looking forward, enterprises must be prepared to cope with a rapid proliferation of data sources and the increased interconnectedness of these sources. When combined with the ever-tighter turnaround times demanded by customers—and often met by competitors—these forces will conspire to render traditional application development approaches inadequate and even counterproductive.