News

CEP Vendors Aleri and Coral8 Merge

• By Jeffrey Schwartz
• March 9, 2009

Two leading suppliers of complex event processing (CEP) platforms, Aleri and Coral8, have combined, the two companies announced today.

The merged company is taking on the Aleri name and will be based at Aleri's headquarters in Chicago. Terms were not disclosed.

CEP is used to provide real-time data processing for applications such as algorithmic trading in the capital markets and other decision-support processes. There are many players who provide point products that are likely to combine over the next year, according to industry analysts.

"Their [Aleri's and Coral8's] product lines complement each other fairly well, although they have some degree of overlap," said Gartner analyst Roy Schulte in an e-mail. "The combined product line will be more complete than either had separately, and they should improve their ability to sell by combining their sales and marketing teams."

The move comes as companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun Microsystems and Tibco are said to be eying the nascent CEP market, according to analysts. "I think they have looked at the development roadmaps of those companies and realizing if they ever acquire a decent vertical strategy, they will be very competitive," said Adam Honore, senior analyst at Aite Group, a technology-focused research firm that serves the financial services sector.

"Aleri is better known for its Live OLAP server, while Coral8 has some advanced end user visualization and portal-type tools," Honore added. Aleri could broaden the reach of real-time business intelligence over time, he said.

"Everyone is looking to reduce their risk," said Daniel Chait, founder and managing director of New York-based Lab49 Inc., which has partnerships with both Aleri and Coral8. Both companies' CEP engines are C++-based and lend themselves well to .NET and Java development, Chait added.

Current Aleri CEO Don DeLoach will be CEO of the merged company, while former Coral8 CEO Terry Cunningham will become chairman.