[Book Review] The Power to Predict

The Power to Predict is one of a series of books I’m currently sloshing through on event-based programming.  It’s author is none other than the CEO of Tibco, Vivek Ranadive.  Noticing that and the forward by Frederick Smith, the FedEx CEO, it definitely caught my eye.

The book is loosely based on the concept of Complex Event Processing (CEP), a technique that’s an evolutionary step above Event Based Architecture (EDA).  The author’s earlier book, the Power of Now, which I haven’t read yet, is apparently more about event-based architecture (or so I picked up from the book).

Generally speaking, the book appeals more towards the business oriented than the technical.  You won’t find any code inside (not a bad thing), however, it was an interesting read to hear how real-time pattern recognition and reaction can be applied to so many industries (his examples included oil rig management, defense/military, telco, financial services, and health care).

While CEP is pretty far from being mainstream (in the MS ecosystem anyway), it’s definitely an interesting study.  Given that industry heavies (such as Google and Amazon) have been applying this quite successfully for some time, I think it’s mostly a matter of time (and tooling) before it goes mainstream.

Overall, I did like the book, however, I would probably recommend you focus your energy elsewhere–especially if you are just trying to learn about EDA and CEP.  This book has good content, but ultimately, it won’t help you make the paradigm shift in thinking that EDA represents.