No matter what your industry, business velocity continues increasing exponentially. Experts estimate that the average large enterprise is inundated with as many as one million events per second. To keep pace and stay ahead of the competition, today's CIO must be able to respond to changing conditions on a dime, even in the face of today's massive data volumes. Each enterprise must be able to handle high volumes of data from disparate sources—data that arrives in continuous streams, shows complex patterns and demands immediate response.

Merely processing this information is insufficient. CIOs must strive to create an instantly responsive enterprise—one that addresses these huge volumes of information in real time, creating immediate and valuable insights that can be acted on at a moment's notice. In today's competitive environment, IT must rapidly recognize trends and patterns and proactively use the information to deliver strategic business knowledge and enable real-time decision making.