Sensing and Responding in the AI Era: S&P’s Carl Lehmann on Event-Driven Integration

Carl Lehmann, Senior Analyst at 451 Research S&P Global Market Intelligence, delivered a compelling session at EDA Summit titled “Event-Driven Integration: Real-time Execution Across Hybrid IT Architectures” in which he explored how enterprises must evolve to compete in the AI era. His message was clear: application modernization and event-driven integration (EDI) are now essential for enabling real-time responsiveness across hybrid IT architectures.

This post summarizes a talk delivered by Carl Lehmann of S&P Global Market Intelligence at EDA Summit 2024.

You can watch the full presentation at EDASummit.com.

Why EDA Matters More in the Age of AI

In today’s dynamic environment, change isn’t just constant — it’s accelerating. AI-driven automation, decentralized infrastructure, and streaming data sources mean that enterprises must operate with near-instant awareness. Lehmann argues that this isn’t just a technical shift; it’s a business imperative.^[1]

Events — whether a missed customer transaction, a delayed sensor reading, or an unexpected spike in demand — are the new currency of operational intelligence. Enterprises that can’t detect and act on these moments in real time risk falling behind.

To stay competitive, organizations must embrace a new operational posture: one defined by continuous awareness and responsiveness. Lehmann calls this “sense and respond.” It’s not enough to react after the fact — in the AI era, the winners will be those who can respond as events unfold, and even anticipate them before they happen.

How Companies are Striving for Event-Driven Integration and Agentic AI

Drawing from 451 Research’s global network of 50,000 IT leaders, Lehmann shared emerging best practices:^[2]

• Cloud-native is key — Organizations are shifting to microservices, containers, and serverless to build flexible, responsive systems.
• Event-driven integration is essential — Using brokers and asynchronous messaging to decouple producers and consumers of data lets enterprises sense and respond in near real time.
• Hybrid IT is the norm — Integration strategies must span public cloud, private cloud, and on-premises infrastructure.
• “Real-time” is being redefined — Only 14% expect sub-second data availability. But in the AI era, that’s not fast enough.

Real-World Impact

The research reveals a direct link between integration agility and business performance:

• Data-driven leaders outperform — Firms making the most real-time, data-driven decisions are consistently more competitive.
• Hybrid complexity is rising — Most organizations plan to expand across multiple infrastructure types. Integration must handle distributed and disparate venues (as shown in Lehmann’s slides).
• Expectations for “real-time” are still too slow — The majority of respondents define real-time as 1–5 minutes. That’s inadequate when autonomous agents are expected to make instant decisions.

Final Thoughts

Lehmann’s message isn’t just a call for modernization — it’s a call for reinvention.^[3] To succeed in the AI era, organizations must build systems that think in events. That means designing for change, building with flexibility, and aligning IT infrastructure to detect, interpret, and act the moment something meaningful occurs.

Event-driven integration becomes the nervous system of this new enterprise model. It allows businesses to rapidly reconfigure processes, route data intelligently, and coordinate across cloud and on-prem environments — all while maintaining responsiveness under pressure.

As Lehmann puts it, enterprises must become event-driven to thrive. Event-driven integration enables not just faster systems, but smarter ones — capable of acting on what’s happening right now.

[1] 451 Research S&P Global Market Intelligence, Event-Driven Integration: Real-time Execution Across Hybrid IT Architectures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IcIz7VzeYM

[2] 451 Research S&P Global Market Intelligence, Tech Trend in Focus: Hybrid Integration Platforms January 23, 2024

[3] 451 Research S&P Global Market Intelligence, Event-Driven Integration: Real-time Execution Across Hybrid IT Architectures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IcIz7VzeYM