James Kobielus has an interesting post up about complex event processing and what it implies for the user interface:

The problem with the term "complex event processing" is that it seems to imply a complex UI--hence, that CEP's potential user base is limited to rocket scientists, Wall Street quants, IT industry analysts (gasp!), and other folks who are professionally obliged to handle (indeed, embrace) complexity.

But complexity is part of the problem, not the solution, where CEP for I&KM is concerned. We can't stop the world of business from growing more multifaceted. But we can and should filter it all down to the simplest, most meaningful, most actionable experience, targeted specifically to each user, and contextualized precisely to each and every occasion.

Conceptually, James is clearly right--who's going to disagree with simple, meaningful, actionable and perfectly contextualized--but how do we get there?

Most obviously, this is a great opportunity for BI/CEP software to take a page from web 2.0 software and give users the freedom to customize their environments, and the tools to see how other users have done it. End users whose environments deliver precisely what they want will deal much more effectively with information than those who can only use what a developer (no matter how skilled) gives them.

However, even beyond tools for easy interaction and customization of their visual environment, in order to make users really effective--whether the context is CEP or anything else--applications should be driven by business problems, rather than the tools and technologies available to IT professionals. Users are the experts in their domains, and they will know what qualifies as "targeted specifically" and "contextualized precisely."

Ideally, you would have a platform upon which users and/or their colleagues in IT departments could build applications across the full range of business processes that exist in an enterprise. That way you could leverage IT resources and let users take advantage of a common environment, but still address their business processes in the way that best suits them.

Hmm, I wonder where I could get a platform like that...