First we saw the great shake-out in the rules processing world – ILog went to IBM, RuleBurst/Haley went to Oracle, etc. Now consolidation and merger is starting to raise its head in the younger, but related, world of CEP (Complex Event Processing) with the coming together of two leaders in that field, Aleri and Coral8. We are probably still some way off seeing these companies snapped up by the biggest names in the industry, but it may happen eventually.

Both the rules companies mentioned above are members of Microsoft’s Business Processing Alliance; it is interesting to note that Microsoft is now effectively in alliance with two of their direct competitors in the BPM space. Currently, however, CEP remains unknown territory to most .NET developers. Will there be a major CEP story on the Microsoft platform in future? We will have to wait to see.

Best wishes to the newAleri.