Tim Bass
09-19-2008 04:18 AM
It it fairly well established that overt risk tasking, greed and corporate arrogance by financial services companies have destroyed the real estate market and crippled the global economy. Countless millions of folks have lost their homes and life savings. This corporate arrogance and greed was like a “greed virus,” spreading across the world like a plague.
A similar arrogance is happening in CEP-land, where, it seems, each and every financial services event processing application is now a “CEP application” just because someone in capital markets puts “CEP” in the same paragraph. I find it ridiculous that the same market of folks who have helped destroy the global economy are now the world’s self-proclaimed authorities on complex event processing. Amazing, if you really think about it, isn’t it?
I read many posts these days by folks in the capital markets trading world, claiming their message routing application is “CEP,” or their algo trading application is “CEP,” - feeds and speed, typical of what “turns on” the financial services folks. As an editorial note: I recall when I worked for a software company, folks on the same team who worked on Wall Street would look down on folks with many years of IT experience outside of financial services. Some would say “he is only a security guy” in their attempt to put down anyone who does not have trading floor IT experience on their resume. I found it all quite ridiculous and foolish.
My resume, for what it is worth, has a number of financial services companies, including either assessing, architecting or building large scale security systems for S.W.I.F.T, Chase or SBC. This experience does not seem to “count” with the trading floor folks, since security is more about getting things right, not just supporting a form of gaming or gambling with other peoples money, with more feeds and speeds the better.
Of late, as I have watched the CEP/EP space evolve, and unfortunately, I see a similar type of “capital markets virus” spreading into CEP-land. Folks on the trading side of financial services seem to think that whatever they say or do is right, and whatever others outside of the trading side do is wrong. These folks are quick to ridicule others who have far more experience than they do, outside of the trading floor of capital markets.
After all, mostly what they do on the trading side is route orders - and if a little old lady in a small town in Iowa loses her life savings because of a bad investment decision, it means little to the folks on the trading floor, the market folks are into feeds and speed - just keep the beast alive. Place your bet on this market or that one! Away we go, faster and faster!!!!
I am sometimes a little sad to observe the same audacity in the CEP world. Instead of focusing on the hard complex problems that require accuracy, the original set of problems defined when the phrase “complex event processing” was minted, the capital market folks have hijacked the term for their marketing purposes in algo trading and order managment systems. These same people ridicule others who are working to solve the (originally stated) complex event processing problems, problems the capital market traders seemingly cannot understand, since they have never worked on complex network or security management problems.
Nevermind, that these “ultra low latency” systems cannot accurately detect a complex money laundering scheme or an elaborate fraud. Nevermind that these “CEP engines” cannot accuracy insure that Average Joe does not lose his hard earned money in a fraud scheme.
I have no problem with folks in capital markets using the term CEP, but they should not ridicule those in technical areas that are not focused on keeping the “trading beast” alive so people can lose their life savings in a blink of an eye; but instead focused on solving complex problems such as the class of problems called out when the three letter acronym “CEP” was created.
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