- Firing Up the Corporate Neurons
- Revisiting the Enterprise Nervous System
- The Ideal EDA
- BAM-A Related Concept
- Chapter Summary
BAM—A Related Concept
Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) is related to EDA, but different enough that we discuss it in brief. Our goal is to help you differentiate between BAM and EDA, as the two ideas are often used interchangeably in IT discussions. We do not think they are interchangeable.
BAM is the idea that business decisions would be better and more timely if they were based on timely information extracted through business activities that are exposed near real time. Too often, decisions are made based on warehoused data that is stale or misrepresented because of the available gathering technique. Event-driven architectures make it easier to tap into key business activities. BAM components monitor these activities, aggregate the information, watch for anomalies, send warnings, and represent the data graphically.
Historically, most of the activity in this area was achieved with in-house built dashboards. Now we’re seeing more vendor products in the space. BAM is most useful in situations where quick critical decisions are important. Interesting applications of this concept include illustrating Key Performance Indicators (KPI), watching for homeland security anomalies, monitoring supply chain activities, and discovering business-to-business (B2B) exchange patterns. Implementing a BAM solution within your EDA is almost always a good idea.