The Apama Event Manager is at the heart of the Apama software platform. By searching streaming data from multiple sources in real-time, detecting complex user-defined patterns and immediately delivering the resulting intelligence, traders are able to make informed trading decisions within a millisecond timeframe.

The Apama Event Manager is integral to helping clients, such as JPMorgan and ABN AMRO, build a new generation of solutions that take advantage of dynamic market opportunities instantly in accordance with their own unique trading strategies.

The Apama Event Manager can integrate any number of data feeds and enables users to define the events for detection and the actions to take when specified data patterns occur. The Event Manager then acts in real-time by generating an alert, executing an action (eg. a trade) or computing an analytic. Using graphical tools, users can change the strategy parameters on the fly and develop, test and deploy new and innovative trading strategies in hours rather than weeks.

The Apama team began its research ten years ago at Cambridge University, UK. The team found that the existing methods used to identify patterns in real-time streaming data were fundamentally flawed within environments such as financial trading, where sub-second performance, scalability and seamless integration with existing technologies are essential.

Dr John Bates, CTO and co-founder, Apama, says: "Conventional database management systems and rules engines put significant limitations on the user's ability to detect and respond to data patterns from multiple streaming data feeds. To overcome these latency issues Apama turned the problem of data management on its head. Rather than storing data, the Apama Event Manager allows multiple data feeds to flow through the platform. Our patented technology captures only the information relevant in a particular instance, within a millisecond time frame, so that an identified threat or opportunity can be actioned immediately."

Peter Beard, CEO, Apama, comments: "As the electronic trading markets continue to expand, financial institutions are looking for ways to improve their service levels and differentiate themselves. Complex Event Processing is at the heart of the latest developments in this area. Apama provides the 'enabling platform' or 'white box' that allows financial institutions to build trading solutions that leverage their intellectual property, so that they can react instantly to changing market conditions. By providing traders with access to the exact real-time data they need when they need it, they can gain a real competitive advantage. The interest in Apama technology exists across asset classes on both the buy and the sell sides."

Beard adds: "The recent patent grant confirms what we and our customers have known from the beginning - that our solution provides a unique and compelling proposition in today's crowded financial technology marketplace."