Event-driven architecture (EDA) provides an ideal framework and model for designing software applications. At its core is the occurrence of an event, or a change in the state of a software/hardware component. These events may be triggered by internal or external factors, such as user activity in your system, or by an action in a linked network. When an event occurs, it can set off a reaction that follows your specified rules and workflow to achieve a range of objectives.
Gartner estimates event-sourced, real-time situational awareness will be a vital factor in 80% of digital business solutions by 2020, and that over 75% of new business ecosystems will need support for event processing.
The reason is clear: companies are struggling with the current state of affairs—and if you’re one of them, Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) can address a lot of the issues you face.
Combatting Companies’ Pain Points
It’s common to feel like you’re juggling complex IT challenges in your organization. Traditional architectures simply can’t handle performance in real time, or at scale. Though big data is revolutionizing the way we do everything, it’s a double-edged sword. The more data companies generate, the harder it is to manage.
Large quantities of data slow down less agile systems that can’t handle the workloads or use cases. Time series databases aren’t well-suited for relational modeling use cases, for example. A document database might have a superb structure, but doesn’t perform as well when it comes to parsing analytics.
Even applications that look great on the surface often have wobbly infrastructure performance capabilities that hamper your progress. Today’s companies rely on flexible, globally-integrated, cloud-native applications running 24/7 with 99.999% uptimes.
Benefits of Event-Driven Architecture
Many challenges can be solved by moving to EDA systems. Benefits of an event-driven approach include:
- Improved competitive advantage: Every organization needs to respond quickly and effectively to changing markets or circumstances. Event-driven architecture combines data-pattern identification with automatic alerts and notifications to the right people. This enables businesses to make operational decisions in real-time.
- Greater operational efficiencies: The loose coupling of an EDA without affecting the layering, which makes for seamless, cost-effective operations.
- More robust information: Since events are recorded as they occur, from sources such as Internet of Things (IoT) devices, applications, and linked networks, companies have access to all the data and context they need to make the best decisions.
- Better scalability and fault tolerance: An EDA is scalable because it is implemented using a modern distributed, and fault-tolerant architecture. Loosely coupled computing nodes work together to form a cohesive event-processing engine with unlimited scale. If an event processing node fails, another will immediately come to life and pick up where the prior node left off. This decoupled and distributed environment gives your organization the power and peace of mind to handle any set of workloads.
- Increased versatility: Event-driven applications are typically nonlinear and asynchronous, which makes them more adaptable. This enables components to function independently, allowing them to couple and decouple into networks, and be used and reused many times over.
- Forecasting functionality: An EDA is particularly well-optimized to make use of real-time analytics. This makes it possible for companies to identify patterns that forecast events and prepare a response. With this level of “pre-emptivity,” many organizations can make vast improvements to their typical customer experience.
The goal of processing in an event-driven environment is to enable your system to identify critical events based on patterns, opportunities, and threats, and to respond to them either before they occur or immediately afterward.
To discover how you can empower your organization to reap the benefits of event-driven architecture, check out our Architecture Modernization Kickstart. In three weeks, we’ll rescue your organization from the “digital transformation quicksand” by modernizing your Enterprise Architecture strategy to finally let your IT architecture work for you, not against you.
Share on 
