Louis Lovas of Progress Apama wrote a complimentary blog entry on the topic at hand, CEP Maturity Models.   In his post, Louis says:

“What a CEP platform has tracks independently of what it is capable of doing. ….. What CEP does, is likely what Tim is referring to when he states we’re in the Technology Trigger phase.”

Peter Lin’s comment, in reply to Louis, concurs:

“Given that COTS CEP has only been around a few years, I think it is safe to say it’s still in the early phase. If we compare it to messaging middleware, which has been around for more than 15 years, CEP isn’t as mature. Another comparison is business rule engines and expert systems. The earliest business rule engines date back to late 80’s. All things considered, I would agree with Tim. COTS CEP still has a lot of time to mature.”

Louis was spot when he said that I was focused on overall CEP functionality; not individual product realiabity.

Independent of how reliable a particular CEP-type application might appear; the overall state-of-the-art of CEP is really quite immature.