Serious discussion of event data management, CEP, and how they relate to event driven applications is a topic that's gone under the radar for a while. Even though databases are always a central element of a CEP-based system, we haven't pushed the exploration of these use cases with any vigor. That needs to change, and we've put a lot of effort this year at StreamBase into broadening the discourse about CEP beyond point applications like algorithmic trading. Market data management is one such area.
This week's announcement about a new StreamBase customer, BlueCrest, helps broaden that discourse. BlueCrest deployed Vertica, and StreamBase as an intelligent, low-latency, aggregated market data management backplane. Real-time, event driven data management is a great use of CEP, and brings the "event database" center stage in an event driven architecture (EDA). In this case, the architecture is used to create a real-time, aggregated view of "everything that ticks" in the financial markets for BlueCrest. The importance of this architecture is nicely put by Justo Ruiz-Ferrer, the head of trading strategy systems and quantitative development at BlueCrest:
"Great data management is as important to us as quantitative trading models." What an extraordinary statement. As the capital markets go through its massive gyrations, intelligent, low latency data management is becoming as important as their quantitative trading models. More than ever, I hear electronic trading gurus say stuff like this - that the the quality of trading is only as good as the quality of the data. With the markets constantly fragmenting, segmenting, compressing, and then breaking up again, it's harder than ever to keep up, and trade in new asset classes. In the case of BlueCrest, their market data backplane manages "everything from traditional fixed income, equities, FX and related derivatives, to exotic commodity, energy and alternative asset classes." All in real-time, in an event driven architecture.
Soon we'll release a comprehensive case study on this blog about the BlueCrest system to help share its interesting technical elements with the community. More to follow on that later, but for now, here's the BlueCrest / Vertica / StreamBase architecture:
More to come on the role of serious event data management in EDA!