- By Joaquim P. Menezes -IT Concepts video - Business Activity MonitoringI was at event yesterday during which Chris Brakel, product manager, eBusiness, Microsoft Canada Co. offered some interesting insights about the value of business activity monitoring or BAM.This was only tenuously linked to the focus of the event – which had to do with Longos (the grocery chain) implementation of Microsoft BizTalk server 2006 – and about which I plan to write about more extensively later.But Brakel’s BAM spiel was interesting enough for me to want to use it as a basis of an IT Concepts video – and this blog.First let’s take a look at the Wikipedia definition of BAM: enterprise technology “intended to provide a real-time summary of business processes to operations managers and upper management.”BAM, it goes on to say, presents dashboards that contain key performance indicators (KPI) that support root cause analysis and alerts that warn of impending problems.So let’s see if we’ve got that right.Essentially, BAM warns company head honchos when things are going to go bust any moment.I’ll liked Brakel’s way of portraying BAM and its applications – by contrasting it with a deceptively similar technology out there – business intelligence.But there’s a key difference between BAM and BI says Brakel.BI, he says, looks backward. “It takes a look at all the data you've accumulated, looks for trends – so you can use these to get prepared for the future – take advantage of positive trends and deal with the negative.”And how is BAM software different?In its ability to offer realtime information, says the Microsoft executive.“So it's not going to wait for the data, run an OLAP cube, and take a look and see what trends come out. It's going to be set up to notify you the second it happens. That's the difference.”He related the example of Northern Alberta, where BAM technology is being used to anticipate forest fires (which are not an uncommon occurrence there) and take the necessary remedial steps – including evacuating folk, if necessary.“It’s crucial to look weather patterns and other indicators right now, and to know who to evacuate, at what time and with what speed. Looking at it a month from now is not going to help.”Park officials in the province, he said, use TELUS geomatic data realtime to get on the radio, cell phone or whatever it's going to take to move people out of these towns in Northern Alberta to get them away from forest fires. IT departments which have their own share of fires to put out may find that now is the time to start writing BAM code