Common standards, uncommon advantages!

I am still catching up with work following HP’s Technology Forum and Expo (HPTF&E) in Las Vegas. I will be leaving for vacation at the end of this week and that is only adding to the pressure to make sure I meet my commitments. The picture above is of me alongside HP’s “Performance-Optimized Datacenter” (POD) that was on display in a small exhibition space beneath the main expo hall.

Seeing a “standard” container used this way really took me back to my early days in IT. Some readers may remember my post from March 28, ‘08 “The need for standardization!” where I wrote “the time I spent working in the container shipping business really reinforced for me the value that comes from standardization ... (and) when it comes to standardization, we are beginning to see the same revolutionary approach to packaging appear in the computing industry. It is already well on its way when it comes to storage, and now it’s all about blades!”

Back in the early ‘70s I saw first-hand the value that came with embracing standards and if you recall the picture I selected to introduce the post, it featured containers being incorporated in London into structures as prefabricated, fully-equipped, housing modules. I am not sure I would welcome living on such intimate terms with containers, but with housing prices the way they have been in London lately, perhaps all I could afford would be one of these container “homes.”

But the appearance of standardization is not strictly limited to houses made from containers. As I looked out from the MIX, a bar atop THE Hotel, during a vendor reception for the NonStop community, I couldn’t help but see the rows of houses stretching out to the surrounding hills. The pale ochre stucco walls, and matching red tiles of dwellings all looking identical reminded me, quite unfortunately I suspect, of the folk singer Pete Seeger who had a hit back in the ‘60s singing:

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.

But the rows of houses tailing off into the distance did give the appearance of a city that has standardized (through zoning regulations, of course), appears to be well managed (in terms of services), and with a uniformity that keeps pricing affordable. Well, at least from the vantage point of the MIX, some forty stories above it all. Surrounding a city like Las Vegas, I have no illusions that it supports any more an idyllic lifestyle than any other cosmopolitan city, and any viewer of the TV program CSI will equate this with something more toxic!

Clearly, the POD “boxes” on display at HPTF&E weren’t of the ticky-tacky variety. No stucco visible anywhere. Quite the opposite in fact as these were containers had been the subject of additional reinforcing and bracing – after all, each forty-foot container was equipped with a complement of 22 racks of processor blades and supporting storage. Not quite the kind that blends in with everything else you would typically see at a port or rail terminal – and definitely off-limits to most container fork-lift operators. Heavy-lift cranes only, please. But I like the concept of a data center in a box – and the unique “uncommon” advantages this use of common packaging could provide.

These larger, forty feet containers pack the equivalent computing power to some pretty big data centers. In his most recent blog posting “Sir, Your Data Center Has Arrived” Ron LaPedis wrote that the “POD is HP’s answer to SUN’s Project BlackBox, originally announced in October 2006, which is now sold as the Sun Modular Datacenter S20. However, Sun’s offering is a 20 foot container compared to the HP POD which is a 40 foot container.” He also gave us more details when he described how “the 40 foot HP container can house up to 3,500 compute nodes, or 12,000 LFF (3.5” hot pluggable) hard drives … a 4,000-plus square feet equivalent of a typical data center capacity.” In other words, what may be a 40 X 100 foot data center reduced to just 40 X 8 feet!

Perhaps it was Rackable Systems of Fremont, California, that started all of this when they introduced IT executives to their product MobiRack, an “all-in-one data center (with) capabilities for field deployments.” On the web site, they described how “data center deployments should no longer be limited to the physical confines of fixed, ‘brick and mortar’ facilities.”

While the MobiRack just had wheels underneath the racks, it wasn’t quite what we see today with HP’s POD. However, as Ron pointed out in his blog posting, when Sun introduced its Modular Datacenter all wrapped within an industry-standard twenty foot container, it did raise the ante. But HP’s forty foot container, supporting racks of Blades, is something else again, and really could meet the computing and storage needs of many industries.

Throughout HPTF&E, the message I heard on numerous occasions from NonStop product managers was “common standards, uncommon advantages!” And in reality, nothing reinforced this message more than seeing a data center in a box. A common industry-standard, general-purpose, container offering uncommon advantages with Blades. And in case anyone was wondering – yes, even NonStop is supported!

Capable of being easily and rapidly transported to any corner of the globe, the advantages of the POD should be quickly recognized. Whether part of an emergency response in a time of disaster, or in support of a new branch office in some technology-hostile region of the world, or even playing a role in the support of increasingly more sophisticated military applications. There was a time not that long ago when, worried about loosing its missile launch capabilities, the thought was to have them moving around the countryside on trains. However, with today’s missiles now a commodity item, should we expect to see the control systems charged with their oversight hidden in plain sight on a regular freight train? Just another blue container, right?

Blades are developing into a major success story and the rapidity with which they are finding a home in today’s data centers is creating problems for some IT managers. As one CIO I know posted to the LinkedIn Real Time View user group discussion “Sun-rise? or Sun-set! The latest according to Larry ...” there’s a concern over how “the weight is really a significant problem for more and more people. The floor loading on a fully populated rack of blades can exceed a mainframe's floor loading”

So now we can call our friendly HP sales rep, option up a couple of containers, and have these PODs dropped off in the car park. Maybe better if they were left under cover – whatever. Just bring the power to the PODs, or opt for the separate PowerHouse container from Active Power that provides the complementary power and cooling system to your POD (again, check out Ron’s post for more info), and you have none of the concerns about weight. Haven’t Telco’s been bolting servers to concrete floors for years? Running the cabling overhead in gantries rather than underneath below false floors? Obviously they knew something all those years ago as they “championed” primarily a rack packaging model.

Whether HP’s POD develops any major traction in the marketplace or not – and within my company Goldengate, there are views about PODs that suggests this could be a very limited market – what it visibly reinforces for me is how the march to greater miniaturization continues. Unabated! When I first walked into a data center, the mainframe’s “channels” (selector, and multiplexor) were stand-alone boxes. I even heard of one manager who had a plaque on his desk that simply read “it’s not a computer unless I can walk through its channels!”

But today, the power contained within that data center is barely a fraction of a single Blade package. With common standards becoming even more dominant, will we see today’s POD nothing more that a board we insert into a desk? Or perhaps, a simple package populating future mobile devices? If you had suggested to me in the late ‘60s that everything I could see, within a huge sprawling data center of the day, would shrink to fit inside a game module, and kids everywhere on the planet would be connected, I would have viewed it as ludicrous. So why would it be far-fetched to think of what we see today in a forty-foot container as technology that, in perhaps ten years or thereabouts, occupy nothing more than a drawer?

In the opening session of this year’s HPTF&E, where HP talked so much about a future in which everything in IT is delivered as a service, Ann Livermore, Vice President of HP’s Technology Solutions Group (TSG), and Prith Banerjee, Senior Vice President and Research Director of HP Labs, both talked about the POD. And they were pretty excited by the potential of this usage of a common transportation packaging standard. But I have to believe it’s just one more milestone on the technology lifecycle curve. With miniaturization shrinking the real estate needed for computers and storage to about a quarter or a fifth of what was required a few years ago, as is so often quoted these days, shouldn’t we all be marveling about what’s to come?

One thing is for sure however, like the words Pete Seeger sang, in a decade or so, we will see “little boxes all the same.” Common standards, uncommon advantages, indeed!

HPTF - picking up good vibrations!

I arrived for this year’s HP Technology Forum and Expo (HPTF) Sunday afternoon – well before the official start of the program - to get my first look at the expo. For me, the signs that a major event is about to happen is best reinforced with the activity on the exhibition floor and amid the rubble and chaos, I came across the stand of QLogic Corporation that stopped me dead in my tracks. The picture above shows the prize, a Ducati 1198 sports bike that attendees registering at their stand could win! And Mike Geroche of QLogic assured me that I would be the winner – so I spent a little time making sure no one scratched “my bike!”

Early Sunday evening, as I had walked towards the hotel elevators, I ran into Daryl Ragan standing in the lobby of the Mandalay Bay. For as long as I have been involved with NonStop user events, Daryl had been extremely helpful to me when I was Summit chair from 2000 to 2002. Shortly after exchanging pleasantries, Daryl was joined by Janice Reeder-Highleyman, ITUG’s Chairman in 2001, and the two of them were off for an evening on the town.

It was Janice who strongly encouraged me to get involved with Regional User Groups (RUGs) and who suggested that I participate in one of the early SATUG meetings in South Africa – a commitment that was to lead to many more trips to South Africa over the following years. Leaving the hotel a few hours later, I headed up to my now-favorite “balcony” bar at the Bellagio, the Fontana, to enjoy its view of the hotel’s famous fountains. Margo joined me and we caught up with Stan Prushik. During the time I was on the ITUG board, Stan was the Finance Chair and later, the Vice Chairman and it was good to see him again

And for me, these early encounters with colleagues and friends reminded me of why I keep returning to the “big tent” event each year. Networking, and having eye-to-eye contact with community members is just so important to me and the only way, that I know of, to check the pulse of all those with a passion for NonStop. It was Chris Palombi, VP of Sales and Service at Modius, who made the observation in a post to a discussion on the Real Time View user group (on LinkedIn), of after “having checked-out from the NonStop community for the last 20 years until recently, (but now returned) with a new NonStop application, I was impressed at how much of a community it still is … my observation is that it's these human connections more than anything else that have kept NonStop so durable.”

When it comes to durability and the value from human connections, what was planned as a small reception for NonStop users, organized by the NonStop vendor community, quickly mushroomed into one of the better-attended NonStop gatherings of the week. And the picture above is of Alan Dick “networking” with Margo Holen and myself, engaging us in a discussion on the NonStop community and on the value of face-to-face meetings. I have known Alan for many years and our paths had first crossed back in Lisbon (or was it Vienna?) when the ITUG Board met with the former Chapter heads of Digital’s user community. And through the years I have always enjoyed talking with Alan – his even-handedness, and awareness of the needs of the NonStop community, is something I have always appreciated and it is encouraging to see leaders like Alan on the board of Connect.

But more importantly, the question that came up most often at the reception was what do NonStop business users themselves consider a community to be? Is it really all about the need to meet face-to-face, and to have at least one major event? In a comment that Sam Ayres, a NonStop user and very active in the SIGs and Advocacy, posted to the same discussion on the Real Time View user group as had Chris, he observed how, “nothing replaces a face-to-face meeting … of experts gathered from around the entire world!”

It has been my own observation that one of the key ingredients for the success of the events across the decades has in fact been the opportunity to meet with experts. At a vendor reception on the Expo floor, GoldenGate Software, the company I work for, had a bar set up within the booth and very quickly, a number of bar stools appeared. No sooner had I sat down than I was joined by Fred Laccabue, VP of NSD at HP, and then by Wendy Bartlett and Daryl Ragan. The picture here is of all four of us enjoying the hospitality being provided by GoldenGate Software that evening.

In the lead-up to the reception on the Expo floor, there had been a number of keynote presentations involving HP executives and where we heard Paul Miller talk of blade architectures and of “where others see a form factor, we see convergence to deliver everything as a service.” This was followed by a NonStop “general session” the following morning. Winston Prather, who heads the NonStop team, did a great job kicking it off and then introducing Product Management as well as NonStop users – more of that will follow in a later blog posting.

However, it was the final Q&A session that caught my attention as one attendant asked the panel “what was being done to educate a new generation of participants in NonStop” as he swept his hand across the audience and pointed out how old we had all become. Randy Meyer jumped right in on this topic and in a few short sentences summarized the fundamental shift in the focus of NonStop development.

“One day, I want to be able to walk into a data center and ask the CIO where are the NonStop servers? Only to be told by the CIO, as he points to rows of blades ‘there here somewhere!’ And one day,” Randy continued, “I want to be able to talk to project managers and ask their leaders where are the NonStop programmers? Only to be told that they too are ‘in one of the teams!’ One day, too I want to be able to enter an operations center and ask the manager where are the NonStop operators? Only to be told as he looks down rows of administrative console attendants that he’s not sure ‘but the business solutions on NonStop are totally integrated into the system and network management tools!’”

While it may be impressive to read of vendors giving financial support to a University program, what Randy suggested was that it’s not a case anymore of equipping the students to work with the technology as much as evolving the technology in support of the students! And for me, this is absolutely the right answer and all the work being done in support of “develop open; deploy NonStop!” But Randy also implies we may face a potential paradox in time - should HP be successful in making NonStop transparent to those developing open and deploying NonStop, will users continue to flock to events on products and technology that are no longer visible?

As the event wound down the attendees were treated to a party that included a performance from the Beach Boys – Brian Wilson, Mike Love, together with John Stamos of the TV Sitcom Full House – by the wave pool at Mandalay Bay that draw a large crowd. And the picture here is of the band continuing to perform late into the evening as attendees waded into the pool for a closer look at the aging stars!

It was back at the 1993 ITUG event in Orlando where I first did booth duty on the Tandem stand – I was covering the unveiling of Tandem’s fault-tolerant LAN connection support, an undertaking that included Ungermann-Bass (UB) engineers, and a convergence of sorts between Tandem and UB products. Later that week, I joined a group that included Michael Ladam of UB that went shopping and in a store, with western attire, we came across a rack of belts with fancy buckles each engraved with a message. Suddenly, Michael pulled one from the rack and to the amusement of the group he exclaimed “look, I have found a buckle that says nothing at all!”

“Convergence, to deliver everything as a service” and “develop open; deploy NonStop” suggests a future landscape foreign to most of us tasked with looking after NonStop today. However, from everything I heard at HPTF&E this year, the need for community ties is as strong as it has ever been and shows no signs of lessening. “Big tent” events that anchor the NonStop community and that give us the opportunity to meet with developers, to spend time face-to-face with other users, and where networking opportunities are endless, will continue to play an important role for all who share in the passion of NonStop.

Scott Healy, a past Chair of ITUG and now a member of the Connect board, recently posted to the Real Time View user group of how “you absolutely can't replace meeting in person, whether it be with colleagues, customers, partners, or with HP engineers and product managers. The community is very interdependent and at the center is the person that employs technology to conduct their business, the business user. Where those people are, other IT professionals will gather around to exchange ideas; HP will be there to educate, learn, and market; partners will be there to meet with their customers, HP engineers, and each other.”

And whether symbolic or not, I have come away from HPTF&E with mild, flu-like symptoms that have given me laryngitis and I am finding it difficult to talk. But perhaps that is as it should be, given that for most of us invested in the support of the NonStop community, it is more important now to hear the views of NonStop business users themselves!

HPTF - Heading for Vegas!

Whenever I return from spending time in Boulder, there’s a serious pile of magazines waiting for me. As I empty the mail box it feels a lot like Christmas, as the mix of business, motorcycle, and automobile literature spills into my hands. Glancing at the covers can often stop me dead in my tracks, forcing me to pull one of two of them out for a quick spot check. Anything new always gets my attention!

Boulder weather was a little unseasonable last week. I had to check the calendar to make sure it was late May as the weather was more like late fall or even early winter – chilly, with light rain. The mountains were shrouded in mist from the low clouds, reminiscent of a Led Zeppelin song, or a page from Lord of the Rings. I took the opportunity to blow the cobwebs out of the Boulder coupe, and the picture above is of me by the side of Carter Lake, a popular boating destination nestled into the front ranges, a little to the North of Boulder.

For the moment, sports are very much in the news and television commentary is falling over itself describing the mounting tension. In America we are watching Ice Hockey finals that are going down to the very last game, and the momentum that Los Angeles Lakers took into the Basketball finals ebbed away last night, ensuring that there will be a real struggle for the trophy after all, and reminding the television audience that it’s too soon to count out Orlando.

In England, the ICC World Twenty 20 Cricket championship that, I am sad to say, has seen the Australian juggernaut derailed in the first round, departing without a single win. Summer hasn’t truly arrived and with “the Ashes” to be contested, it’s too soon to count the Aussies out either! Unlike their cricket counterparts, and as the Rugby as the international fixtures commence in earnest, the Australian Wallabies tore apart the Barbarian Rugby side – although, that team’s name bothers me a tad as surely barbarian rugby sounds a lot like tautology.

When it comes to language, I have to give the editors of this month’s car magazines a pat on the back as they simply outdid themselves in these most recent issues. When it came to describing the new Bentley Continental GTC Speed, the reporter began with “(it) utters an ominous bass rumble, like the first slab of an avalanche cracking off a mountain, and then the muffler bypass flaps kick in to unleash the sound track of a World War II dogfight over the English Channel.” Warming to his subject, he then adds “birds scatter and OPEC sheiks smile as 5500 pounds of Bentley hurtles down the road with the unrelenting force that only a truly bonkers motor can provide.”

Putting it to one side, I flipped quickly through another magazine before stopping at an article on the new Maserati Granturismo Sport (or, GT-S). The reporter had just finished comparing the car to a BMW M3, a Mitsubishi Evo MR, and the new Nissan GT-R and declared that the GT-S provided the most satisfaction. He explains how “plainly put, the GT-S possesses the intangibles the others can’t begin to grasp. Like a Ferrari-built wet-sump 4.7 liter V-8 whose wail under wide-open throttle fills the sumptuous cabin as if Pavarotti were in the back seat belting out ‘Turandot’ and swigging grappa.” Later, and after he had turned off the electronic assists and started to really drive the GT-S hard, the reporter exclaims “and Pavarotti suddenly appears in the rearview, belting and swigging with every beat of your right foot …. (as you go) finger dancing with the large, biscotti-shaped shift paddles!”

All week I have been thinking about this year’s user event in Las Vegas, the HP Technology Forum and Expo (HPTF&E) and it’s hard not to be swept up in the excitement and anticipation as the week approaches. After all, this is the HP event we wait for all year. But after watching the sporting events, and reading the magazines, I am not sure anything I post here can match what’s already been said.

HPTF&E 2009 will no doubt feature a number of NonStop configurations at the Expo that will demonstrate how open the solution has become, and how easy it is to run modern applications. The support for Java, and the ease with which the NonStop server participates in Java and .NET frameworks and while inheriting the traditional Tandem properties of Availability, Scalability and Data Integrity, has sealed the deal with many CIO’s!

Last year, NonStop on Blades was the highlight of the show and this year I am expecting to hear a lot more from the user side about the stability, ease of conversion, and performance gains as they now have the experience with the new NonStop Blades packaging. However, given the current economic circumstances, and the obvious impact it’s had on many of our travel budgets, I remain a little concerned about who will actually show up for the occasion. But hey, after Train and Matchbox 20 – we have the Beach Boys! Now that’s more like it.

Before I leave the magazines, there was one editorial that did catch my eye. The reporter, Arthur St. Antoine has been a source for quotes in many of my presentations and in this latest issue he talks about the sacrifices some car enthusiasts are prepared to make for their cars, observing how “if you had to, you’d sell your house and put a doorbell on your Corvette … (and) are the new high-performance summer tires worth a sacrifice elsewhere (yes)?” And then he concludes with an observation on one popular car of how it “is simply a nice transport appliance.”

Only a small minority of drivers fall into the category of car enthusiasts, and consider every car as an engineering work of art, while the rest view cars as nothing more than a tool that gets them from point A to B. And for many of us in technology, there is a minority that values a computer’s attributes, and recognizes its value proposition to them, while others remain unaware of what’s inside the box and consider the computer nothing more than a tool. Every problem we encounter in today’s business world can be addressed with a cluster of Windows boxes and, if we can add enough redundancy, the configuration should be able to address all of our requirements after a fashion.

But the tide is turning – the need to use energy more efficiently, the need to protect and secure confidential customer information, and the need to seamlessly scale as the business grows, all contribute to the type of technology we select. Can we view technology solely as a computing appliance any longer? Can we simply shrug our shoulders and ignore the potential downside risks that come with ignoring the choice of platforms?

Now, I don’t want to discourage the use of appliances – in the data warehouse marketplace there has been a considerable success by vendors selling data warehouse appliances. By packaging servers, storage, operating systems, and the data base software as a single, well-integrated solution that can be easily deployed, these appliances are helping many companies and vendors like Netezza and Greenplum enjoy considerable success.

But in general, and apart from these special cases, computing appliances have gained little traction with most companies. Just as in any major sporting contest however, no one wants to count out these appliances. And while the number of different platforms available today is way down from what it used to be, and declining with each merger and acquisition and changing business model, it remains a strong testament to the original designers of NonStop that, after 35 years, the platform no one would ever mistake for an appliance is still with us today.

Nice computer appliances, just as nice transport appliances, may appeal to the mass consumer marketplace – but when has solving business problems for Global 1000 companies ever been considered a part of this market segment? When did we ever think the vendors in this space would provide the type of global support (and investment in the future) that purveyors of today’s top-end servers routinely deliver? None of us really expect to provoke the same degree of excitement with a server that a Bentley or a Maserati may engender, but within most big companies the value that comes from systems like NonStop is just as real, and “driver’s commitment” often no less enthusiastic. Just talk to the folks who run these servers!

It would be remiss of me not to pass on the communities thanks to Scott Stallard who only recently has decided to retire as head of HP’s Enterprise Storage and Servers (ESS) division. I once thought I had seen Scott driving a Bentley Continental GT along California’s Pacific Coast Highway but no, he told me that it wasn’t him. Scott has been a huge support of user groups while I have known him and I will always remember the time I shared the stage with him at the European ITUG event in Madrid. Speaking on behalf of the community I wish him all the best – and now the rumor has it that while it wasn’t him in the Bentley, he may be seen in something perhaps not as comfortable but easily just as quick!

There will always be a thriving marketplace for the type of servers HP provides today in NonStop. And never have I seen times when competition has been tougher. There will be those who view the market as one for the computer enthusiasts – but what really separates enthusiasts from those that are content with appliances is the knowledge that today’s 24 X 7 business needs to be served with the best tools. And at this year’s HPTF&E, for those of us attending, better tools will be on display and they will be NonStop.

Opinions and Fragmentation Aplenty!

Last weekend we drove through Las Vegas on our way home to Boulder and I couldn’t help but think of this year’s upcoming HPTF event – now only two weeks away. And I couldn’t help thinking how quickly a year has passed. And the picture here is of the old town hall in Prague and its astronomical clock; a clock that has been keeping time since the early 15th century!

Yes, time “passes more quickly these days” is a cliché – but it seems only a short time ago when we first heard the news at last year’s event of NonStop supporting HP’s Blades. In the latest issue (May – June, ’09) of the Connection magazine Winston Prather, VP and GM of the NonStop Enterprise Division, reflects on the theme of Blades. Sounding very much like a NASCAR driver in the winner’s circle, Winston manages to thank all the parties contributing to the success of NonStop on Blades and admits “it’s hard to believe that it was just one year ago that we launched the Integrity NonStop BladeSystem, leveraging HP’s industry-leading blades portfolio and multi-core Intel Itanium processors.”

I have already posted a blog on the week spent in Prague, but as I was sitting in United’s lounge at Los Angeles airport, waiting for the flight to Europe, I saw a poster for the Intercontinental Hotel chain that asked "do you live an Intercontinental life?" And my first thought was of how I am an Australian, married to a US citizen, but of Polish origin, I’m a resident of Colorado but living in California, and I’m about to depart for Prague. Living an intercontinental life - oh yeah? Well dah!

For most of the ‘80s and ‘90s, and into the early part of this century, airline timetables governed many of my actions and swamped my calendar. Checking airline upgrade lists become a constant distraction. And for those of us who pursue careers in marketing, product management, or business development there had been little choice other than to embrace the intercontinental life. After all, networking and building ties with companies and individuals, is a very critical aspect of these jobs. Or so it used to be!

These days, and with time appearing to accelerate as each year passes, networking is fast moving to the electronic medium, and social networking is playing a greater role in how we continue to network. The picture here is of me taking in Prague with the old town hall and clock behind me, soaking up the late afternoon sun. These days I am spending my time on the road participating in user events where I get a chance to meet with many who read this blog, and to speak on the material I cover here. And that’s about it – I have cut way back on my travel and on my time away from the office.

Can social networking in the electronic world, whether blogs, online forums, e-“user groups”, and the like really substitute for time well spent on the road? Can I readily let go of living the intercontinental life? And can sitting at a screen and banging away at a keyboard, as I do regularly most nights, provide the same experience as face to face meetings? In most respects I am not yet at the point where I can say any of these communication channels completely eliminate the need to meet and to “network” in the real world, but they are certainly cutting down on any justifiable need to travel. Yet I am reminded that there are issues with social networking, and caution is still required. It’s far from being the perfect solution for all of us.

Perhaps the most obvious issue with social networking is that what we read is simply opinions. And what we also find is that there is a wealth of opinions on just about every topic. Back on April 21st, ’08 I posted “We all have opinions!” where I observed how “social networking has made enormous inroads to the way most of us maintain our awareness of what’s happening across the industry. There’s no shortage of writers willing to express their opinion on a wide variety of topics.”

I also remarked on an exchange that I had with an industry analyst from the Gartner Group, who I was travelling with, after suggesting that the explosion in social networking might have an impact on companies like Gartner. The analyst responded “companies like Gartner are not really in the opinion business as much as they are in the analysis business.” I then added in that post of how “I have to agree with him on this point – opinions can be pretty easy to provide but good analysis is always a premium commodity.” And then I followed with “but does that make the information exchanged in social networks any less important? Can the opinions expressed be discounted because they are made in a social setting?

For the past two months I have been actively engaged in a new user group I started on LinkedIn – the Real Time View user group. Readers with LinkedIn profiles may want to take a look at the discussions taking place on this site. In one discussion the exchanges between readers developed rapidly, and there was more than one reader who emailed me privately saying these were just opinions – and we know that everyone has one! However, I was reminded of the comments from the Gartner analyst who added that “there will always be a need for companies like Gartner when we need to see more detail analysis of a market segment or a developing technology … opinions can be pretty easy to provide but good analysis is always a premium commodity.”

And then there is the other problem – given that there are so many opinions, it’s not that easy to find them all. The ease with which a global audience can be addressed has lead to a rapid increase in the number of places you can turn to for opinions – and there’s no certainty that any of us has a handle on them all (for any specific topic). I was reminded of this when comments were posted to the Real Time View user group, as well as to the Connect online community that lamented, possibly out of frustration from it all, of how perhaps now “we need to do a moderate amount of consolidation of our discussion channels, so the discussions do not become so fragmented as to be useless.”

This last comment was provided in a discussion that followed me asking the question: “User Groups and Social Networking - too much of a good thing?” What followed from one community leader really struck home as he made the observation “the ease with which anyone can start anything - a blog for example - can be / is a direct cause of the fragmentation (it's not meeting my requirements, I can do it better by doing it this way). I guess I would argue that whilst I don't want to constrain anyone, I value the ability to network, the ability to meet face to face and explore the nuances (and go down rat-holes) of how products are used.”

So perhaps social networking is far from being the perfect channel for communication. Perhaps it does suffer from being “just opinions, not analysis” and is leading to fragmentation with no certainty that any of the opinions expressed are anything more than those of a vocal minority and far removed from the sentiments of the majority. But my own experience is suggesting that, for many of us, this is becoming a valuable tool for checking current information about the platforms and vendors we so depend on. It is also confirmation that, in the end, we vote with our keyboard and mouse – we simply do not return to those sites where there’s little activity and likewise, are drawn back to those that are frequently updated. After all, poor judgment and badly expressed opinions will not hold our attention for long, and there are always many other sites we can visit.

The community leader I referenced above went on to add “and with that, I accept that a user group is our best way of doing it to date. That means there will be some programs I use, some that I don't, and many that I will work to improve and evolve. I'll try new methods, dump them if they are not working, grab the good things from programs that have failed and put them into others etc.”

This I fully agree with – even as time flies past us, and continues to surprise us with the rapidity of its progress, there are a couple of times a year where getting together remains very valuable. But am I eager to get back on the plane? Am I eager to leave the keyboard and the access it provides to those in the community that do not have the same opportunities? I don’t think so …

Social networking may not completely eliminate our need to travel, and there will always be situations best handled face to face, but the paths between the real and electronic worlds are very much on a collision course and the only question that remains is when those paths will collide. As for me, I have already begun gravitating to the electronic world and anticipate seeing many more of you taking up residence.

For those of you making plans to participate in this year’s HPTF event in Las Vegas, I will be only too happy to find time to have coffee or to share a drink … unlike in previous years where my duties compelled me to be away from the exhibition floor, this year you should be able to easily find me in and around the GoldenGate booth. But in the meantime, there are a couple of new postings I need to respond to, a few more opinions to share, and I look forward to reading your comments, as always! See you soon!

Happy 35th, Tandem!

Anniversaries have been on my mind of late – last week I wrote the 125th posting to this blog. A total I didn’t think I would ever reach, and each time I go to the blog and see it displayed, I am surprised. And the readership has continued to climb with every posting. In a few weeks time we will be participating in HPTF&E and I am sure I will run into many of you – I am planning to drive up to Las Vegas from Simi Valley and that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.

Lately, I have been drawing material from the car magazine Motor Trend as often as I have done in the past from Road and Track, as I find the editorial content addressing issues other than just cars. And with what is happening in the car industry, the heads of these car companies are certainly doing their best to generate material for them. But in this latest issue of Motor Trend, writer Arthur St. Antoine talks about the loss Formula One (F1) suffered with the passing of Graham Hill, on November 30th, ‘75.

And it took me back to the time when I lived in London. In a previous posting I have talked of my time working for the shipping company Overseas Containers Limited, but after working in Sydney for a couple of years, I moved to the head office in London for the winter of ’75 – ’76. While watching television one evening I saw the news item that told of Graham Hill being killed in an air crash. With him were members of his small F1 team – Embassy Racing – a very short-lived program. Earlier in his career Graham Hill had scaled the heights of F1 driving and had twice been crowned world champion.

While I never met Graham Hill, for a couple of weeks in the late ‘80s I was reminded of him on a regular basis. Whether it’s the same Graham Hill I’m not sure, but the highway between San Jose and Santa Cruz has an exit to Graham Hill Rd. I was in Cupertino for three weeks of sales training and every chance he had, Jim Miller rounded up a couple of us for a game of golf somewhere in Monterey, and we always seemed to drive past that exit.

It was at the end of this sales training program that Jimmy Treybig stopped by to meet us. I have never been backstage at a rock concert, and have never had the opportunity to meet the cast of a musical or film, but when Jimmy walked into the classroom it was quite an emotional experience. We had been with Tandem only a few months, but already we were aware of the presence Jimmy created whenever he greeted an audience. And the photo at the top of the page dates back to those early days and is of Jimmy presenting my wife Margo with her second TOP’s award.

Tandem Computers Incorporated received the number C0727003, following its filing to be incorporated as a business in California, on November 29th, 1974 – the year before Graham Hill died. Exactly thirty five years ago, this coming November. When ITUG celebrated it’s 25th anniversary in 2003, Jimmy, Jerry Peterson, Larry Laurich, Don Fowler, and a couple of other former Tandem executives all participated. Pauline Nist was extremely gracious in supporting the community’s interest in catching up with these folks one last time – and there are many of us with a small notebooks, on a silver chains, draped over a chair or door covered with these executives autographs.

Over the past few days I have enjoyed a brief email exchange with Jimmy who was very gracious in responding to my questions. As for his early days with HP, Jimmy told me how he has “very fond memories of HP and I am very proud to have been part of its early computers day (1967-1973).” But it was his early days at Tandem that interested me more and when I followed up with a question about those early times Jimmy simply responded “with regard to Tandem in the first year … I was amazed at the capability and drive of our people and very proud of how they met our very aggressive goals while we had great fun.”

From its earliest days, Tandem set out writing the book on Silicon Valley corporate culture. Yes, much of what Tandem did had ties back to HP, but Tandem integrated it into the way it did business unlike any other company had ever done before. And it was mostly about streamlining communication – whether with doughnuts on payday, over beer and popcorn on Friday’s, watching the monthly First Friday entertainment, whatever needed to be said was done so in a way where everyone knew immediately what it was all about. And the people of Tandem kept on delivering.

When I asked Jimmy about the business plan that was developed for Tandem and what markets they viewed as key for their success, Jimmy came back very quickly with “the original business plan was for many years presented at the Stanford Business School. The market focus was financial institutions (electronic money / ATM), manufacturing (like shop floor control), hospitality, printing and publishing … there was a list of where “turnkey” systems had penetrated … and it was very well defined. If we can design it…for sure we can sell it! The definition of the product came from the market.”

By the time I joined Tandem in the late ‘80s, Tandem computers had major presence in nearly all of these market segments. And the fundamentals of Availability, Scalability, and Data Integrity were burnt into the memories of every employee. If an opportunity could be turned to where combinations of these fundamentals were viewed as mandatory, then the business quickly came Tandem’s way. Across all these years, despite the efforts undertaken by companies large and small who tried really hard, the same levels of availability have never been reached.

However, back in those early days, it still required a lot of field attention to make sure newly-delivered Tandem computers were running properly-architected applications. In talking with Chris Palombi of Modius, who had joined Tandem in ’79, in his first meeting with the VP of a local bank Chris told me how “he informed me that he was planning on tossing the NonStop system out because it wasn’t living up to the claims of linear scalability! They had added a processor, after pushing 90%+ CPU usage, and there was little performance gain!” Turned out the applications architect was “schooled on building DEC VMS applications and had taken the same proven monolithic application structure to the Tandem system.”

In an email exchange with HP’s Martin Fink, Senior VP and General Manager, Business Critical Systems, I asked him about the role of NonStop within BCS and he replied "looking back at my time as the head of the NonStop unit for HP and now as the Sr. VP and General Manger of the Business Critical Systems, I can say that I'm excited about how much has been accomplished over the past 35 years and the future that we have in front of us. From the introduction of NonStop up until today, NonStop has represented the pinnacle of high availability. As such, NonStop is a cornerstone for financial institutions and healthcare providers. Availability and scalability are critical success factors for more and more organizations today with the trend growing stronger as we look toward the future.”

In the coming months there will be a couple of occasions where longtime Tandem supporters will get together to reminisce over a couple of adult beverages. It’s no longer cool to call it a Tandem, as today it’s the HP NonStop server. But even so, there’s a new cadre that knows of nothing other than NonStop but the spirit of Tandem lives on. I will be curious to see how many “anecdotal” comments are made to this post but I have to believe there are many stories out there. Just as I am curious about how well the name NonStop translates into other languages – I have heard some stories already that unlike Tandem, that required no translation, NonStop has proved a little more difficult.

Martin also emailed me about the future of NonStop, adding how in recent times, “the NonStop solution began an evolution based on blending three decades of proven architecture with standards-based modern hardware components and software. For example, last year we announced the Integrity NonStop BladeSystem which utilizes HP Integrity Blades powered by Intel Itanium Microprocessors. This solution provides customers with superior total cost of ownership, greater flexibility and scalability while preserving the availability level that they have come to depend on."

And it’s clear to me that the “essence of Tandem” continues to percolate within HP. Will there be another 35 years of history? Will some of us be around for the 50th anniversary? None of us that follow IT feel comfortable with making predictions for the next year to year and a half, let alone 15 or 20 or 35 years out. But when it comes to the NonStop of today, there’s probably very few of us who would bet against it. After all it remains, as Martin wrote “the pinnacle of high availability,” and you only ever reach a pinnacle’s summit, you can never progress beyond it!

The wheel in the sky keeps on turning …

It’s not as though cars dominate my private life, just as it’s not computers and information technology that dominate my public life. My colleagues, however, may argue that this is indeed the case, and that many conversations quickly turn to these subjects, but there’s been times when I was happy talking about sailing, or fine wines, or music. Readers will have seen the lines from songs, and even movies, routinely appear in these postings.

However, the association between cars and computers provides me with a wealth of content with which to work. None more so than when I read about cars in a computer publication this week shortly after I had finished reading a commentary on computers in a car magazine. The picture above was taken of Margo, under the tutelage of instructor Tom Paule, on a cool-down lap at Buttonwillow race track.

It was captured by an entrepreneur who makes a living from photographing the stream of cars and motorcycles that attend track days. And perhaps we need to enjoy driving cars on tracks like this while we can, as the future of high performance cars seems to be up in the air. The mood within governments and across the auto industry appears to be steering us back to smaller, more fuel efficient, cars but with Ford barely afloat, GM headed for the rocks, and Chrysler below the waves, these domestic manufacturers are anxiously trying to get the government to save them so that they get the chance to build these more efficient cars.

It was against this background that I recently ran across an editorial in the computer publication, InformationWeek. Rob Preston, the magazine’s editor, asked “maybe the bigger question is this: are the likes of Chrysler … even worth ‘saving,’ or are they reaching the end of their commercial viability, much as former tech titans Data General, DEC, and Prime once did?”

Ouch … it’s hard to remember how strong these computer companies were in the late ‘80s and how quickly they foundered. And yet, the fate of car companies today looks to be following a similar pattern. In a recent posting to the discussion Fast Lane in the Real Time View user group on LinkedIn, I remarked “so, how much overlap is there? As we try to ‘save the car industry’ do we also need to save the computer industry? Did anyone step in to save Wang? Prime? Data General? Nixdorf? ICL? and so forth – did we appeal to government bodies? There were some murmurings and some guidance / advice – but little else! Computer companies were simply left to collapse. And I wonder, are we quick to recognize the natural order of technology.”

In other words, businesses, no less so than technologies and products, have well defined bell-curve lifecycles and it’s as if the very foundation for the success that propelled them to fortune and fame is proving to be the engine of their demise. These bell-curves provide plenty of excitement as companies charge up the front side slope, but without navigating through technology and product opportunities and jumping onto another bell curve early, there will always be the back side slope to face, so to say. Few technology companies can develop (and adhere to) roadmaps that span more than a decade or so. And fewer still manage to reinvent themselves and to enjoy the rewards that come with the rush up a new front side slope!

Consider all the companies with which IBM competed for the hearts and minds of data center managers, back in the ‘70s – where are they today? Affectionately known as the BUNCH (for Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell) all were capable companies with product lines that stretched up to the mainframe class. For many years, Control Data provided the most powerful computers available, while Burroughs became world-beaters with their formable transactional / online computers. But they proved to be poor visionaries and failed to execute well in a marketplace where IBM flourished. While they all tried to reinvent their business model, even when it meant leaving behind the products that drove their early success, they simply couldn’t save themselves.

When Burroughs and Univac merged to form Unisys, they talked of the merger with references to “the power of two” but quickly, the rest of the industry suggested it was something much less – perhaps “the power of ½!” And this happened as Honeywell refocused on a smaller subset of clients – aerospace, transportation, and automation and control solutions – but only a year ago, it was dropped from the Dow Jones Industrial Average index. NCR faded badly and simply reverted to it’s originally business model based around specialized client devices, while Control Data today is largely forgotten. Slow to react, or perhaps still reluctant to commit, meant that even after accepting the need to change their business models, they couldn’t pull out of the ride down the back side slope of the business lifecycle bell curve.

Moody’s investor services are now promoting a “Bottom Rung” list of companies. Also referred to by one financial analyst as Moody’s “Bucket List” it highlights those companies with debts they will probably not be able to repay by early 2010 – and consequently, will fail. It’s a list that covers many market segments including some that are well known these days (media, automotive, retail, manufacturing, gaming and consumer products) but what caught my attention was the presence of Unisys. While the company has refocused on services and a line of windows servers, it still supports a large population of legacy systems that date back more than a decade and that are in wide use in government agencies around the world.

The Gartner Group quickly produced a research note on Unisys making Moody’s bottom rung that suggested Unisys customers should “devise a plan to mitigate risk … calculate any potential associated exit costs (and) assess the marketplace for potential replacement service providers …” The CEO of the software company Erudine, Martin Rice, was reported to have said “events like this will force the hand of CIOs who would otherwise prefer to leave legacy systems untouched.” Of course, Erudine offers its behavior engine as a good way to exit and Rice was quick to add “this will not be the last time CIOs need to escape a burning platform!” And should Unisys founder, as Moody’s is predicting, there will be many more software vendors relishing the opportunities that will develop.

There is a second reason why I included the photo above and not just because it features a high performance car laying down fast laps on a private track. For me, the more important reason has to do with how the picture came into my hands. The photographer spends weekends at the track and sets up a kiosk at the tracks only food and beverage stand. If you like any of his pictures, he provides them immediately on disk for a small fee. A very simple business model, yet working well for the young entrepreneur!

I had mentioned of how I read commentary on the computer industry in a car magazine. In a commentary on design in the magazine Automobile, columnist Robert Cumberford writes “programming guru Sir Charles Antony Richard Hoare talked (of how) … ‘there are two ways of constructing a (software) design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make is so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.”

And this took me back to the April 20, ’09 email Jonathan Schwartz circulated to everyone at Sun, as the acquisition of Sun by Oracle was announced, and that was released to the press. In it he said “we’ve never walked away from the wholesale reinvention of business models … we’ve never walked away form a challenge – or an opportunity … by acquiring Sun, Oracle will be well positioned to help customers solve the most complex technology problems related to running a business.” And I was struck by how, once again, a company that in the ended up failing to reinvent its own business model now sees itself as a player in helping others with “running a business.”

I have been a strong advocateof keeping things simple and many of the posting found here reinforce this message. With simplicity comes the chance to minimize defects and to have “obviously, no deficiencies!” History is littered with computer companies that have failed to remain competitive and whether they move to new markets, revert to old practices, or merge, without a simple easy-to-communicate business model, it hasn’t halted their slide down the back side slope. And Sun doesn’t have history on its side, this time.

Following the creation of Unisys after the merger between Burroughs and Univac, there was a story doing the rounds that suggested Honeywell would be buying Fairchild Semiconductor and that the new company would be called Farewell Honeychild – what then is the likelihood Ellison will rename the new company Sunacle (rhymes with Cynical)? Which, I have to admit is a little more preferable, to Oracsun (unless you’re Swedish, of course). Probably not – but it was worth a thought!

For me, the relationship between Oracle and Sun will, almost by design, be complicated and several quarters may go by before we see the “obvious deficiencies” that Hoare spoke of. Will we see another rush to “escape (the) burning platform,” as data center managers consider their options? And will we be adding Sun to the steadily lengthening list of former technology titans? Or, has that time passed and there’s already a place reserved for them?

I think the mainframe’s too big!

Getting back into the daily routine in Simi Valley, with a cup of coffee on a warm but overcast afternoon, it’s hard to believe that only the day before I had been in Prague, the Czech Republic. The occasion had been the annual European BASE24 User Group (EBUG) meeting, and the picture is of me in the old town square.

Prague is a city I always enjoy visiting and it has been featured a number of times in this blog. In the November 9th ’07 posting, “Want to be my partner?” I wrote of how I had participated in a “Tandem Partner-to-Partner conference put on just for ISV partners,” and in the March 12th ’08 posting, “It's still the same, just different!” I wrote of how I had come “to Prague to catch up with HP BCS folks,” before adding “Prague is a very pretty city … (its) medieval architecture has been wonderfully preserved.”

EBUG has developed quite a tradition for holding its events among the more interesting cities of Europe – from Istanbul two years ago, to Vienna last year, and then this year Prague. While the attendance was a little down from last year’s Vienna event, the BASE24 user community support was still highly visible and it was clear that the support for BASE24 on NonStop across the community isn’t showing any signs of weakening.

The picture below was taken alongside of the GoldenGate, XYPRO, and HP exhibits and, as is typical for user events these days, it’s where conference delegates spend time networking over coffee. If you look carefully, you can just make out Steve Saltwick leading a user in the HP booth. Steve had just given a short update on HP NonStop’s presence in the Financial Services industry where he built on the material he had covered at last year’s event in Vienna.

In the posting of April 24th, ’08 “Vienna Dialogue!” written at EBUG Vienna and shortly after ACI announced the shift in strategic alliances from HP to IBM, I said that “there were many options open to HP – they could have simply elected to skip the event. In a very calm and measured presentation, Steve Saltwick, of HP BCS, started with the observation that ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!’ … (and he) went on to present HP’s vision of the future, how payments are viewed by HP as a change agent, and that HP was taking clear, low-risk, short term steps with an eye on comprehensive long-term options.”

This year, Steve opened with a slide of a roundtable executive meeting and where there was an elephant standing off to one side. Steve calmly observed “yes, it’s hard to miss the elephant in the room!” In this case it wasn’t a reference to ACI’s partnership with IBM but rather to the unprecedented times all users face in terms of regulations, bail-outs, outsourcing, M&A activity!

But it was hard to ignore the elephant and not think of IBM. “HP has 586 finance industry customers in 78 countries where 79%, or some 462, of them run NonStop. In the last two quarters alone, there had been 49 BASE24 ‘upgrades’ / BASE24 eps ‘new wins’ with 3 new BASE24 / Integrity NS Blades wins.” Low risk, short term steps? And an eye on comprehensive long term options? Clearly, HP hadn’t lost any market share in the year since Vienna’s event. Despite the shift in ACI’s strategy.

Before closing, Steve made the point of how HP had enjoyed a “100% win rate with competitive tenders coming from the installed base.” In other words, almost two years into the strategic partnership with IBM, and there had been no movement across the ACI user community from NonStop to the IBM mainframe System z solution. None! Nadda! Zilch! And there it was – IBM blinked!

Those present from IBM had sat rather nonplussed through the presentation by Jim Johnson of the Standish Group that highlighted the better TCO figures for NonStop on Blades, but now only an hour later, listening to HP highlighting its success of the past years, didn’t please IBM. But was IBM struggling? Uncompetitive? Hardly.

And yet, whether symbolically or not, the picture I have included here is of a System z10 Business Class (BC) mainframe that didn’t make it onto IBM’s booth. It was a tad too big, and remained outside the room for the duration of the event. Enclosed in glass panels, as it was, its internals completely exposed and illuminated by soft green lights, it gave me something to talk about during my own presentation.

Electing to bring a System z10 BC mainframe to the event reminded me of the exchanges I have had with IBM mainframe users over the past year. The Enterprise Class (EC) package, it could be argued, justified the complexity of the “Book” package – but since the Books in the EC couldn’t be reused in the BC package, why didn’t IBM use this opportunity to embrace Blades? Aren’t they thinking anymore? Hadn’t they just bought Platform Solutions Inc that had the firmware to run zOS on Blades? And then it happened – IBM chocked!

Just as HP retains the NSAA architecture, used with the NS16200 / NS14200 for instance, and positions it as a “top-of-the-line enterprise computing solution” so too IBM positions the System z10 EC as its top of the line. However, HP has added Blades packaging and has the ability to support all of its major operating systems with the one package, whereas IBM remained the contrarian. In not pursuing the Blades option, and sticking solely to Books, I have to believe it adds to the cost of the mainframe and, even as I listen to IBM’s counter arguments, it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to readers of this blog – I have been public with my opinions on this matter for some time.

In previous postings to this blog I have been highly critical of the proprietary nature of IBM’s chip packaging for the mainframe and of their reliance on Books rather than Blades. In the posting of January 21st ’09, “HP and IBM? Moving in opposite directions ...” I wrote of how, “unlike the IBM mainframe, HP’s largest servers (including NonStop) now support standard blade packaging and have embraced industry-standard interfaces and controllers … (on) the other hand, IBM is continuing with its proprietary ‘book’ packaging, completely shunning the blades that are available for the System p and System i user … in this instance, maintaining a proprietary approach (and) I think they are headed down the wrong path.”

Talking with IBM earlier in the day, they had said to me that moving the BASE24 community to the IBM mainframe wasn’t proving to be as easy or as straightforward as they had thought. Other delegates that I had talked to suggested that some within IBM’s management still considered migrations as nothing more than a 30 – 90 day professional service. And there were others within IBM who thought that NonStop users considering an upgrade to Blades were facing a migration away from NonStop – not aware that NonStop was supported by Blades!

Yet many delegates were surprised by my presentation. After listening to the presentation of Steve Saltwick, and earlier to Jim Johnson’s presentation, it was clear to me that the EBUG audience remained very committed to NonStop. When Barclays gave a presentation on their move to NonStop on Blades, and on how they had migrated their ATM network from the IBM mainframe to NonStop – I sensed the mood of the audience had become a lot more positive toward NonStop on Blades and I elected to give a lot more emphasis to IBM’s platform and packaging miscues.

And it occurred to me that perhaps part of IBM’s dilemma is that it too faces choices. Perhaps my presentation only confirmed their earlier observations about how difficult it had become to convince NonStop customers to migrate to System z. Should they have been surprised – the audience was made up of NonStop users, after all.

I have written extensively on how ACI’s preference for IBM, as its sole strategic partner, exposes BASE24 users to more choices – and how it will be these users who ultimately end up deciding the fate of the relationship between ACI and IBM. In the posting on March 16th, ’08 “ACI Strategy - it's all about choice!” I noted that “(while) ACI executives still reiterate the strategic nature of the partnership with IBM, it will be the customer that controls the final outcome and will be choosing the platform that meets their needs … (everything) I now know about the strategy suggests that ACI users will be given a choice – and this cannot be a surprise for anyone.”

But is it ACI customers that are the only ones having to choose? Pursuing a strategy based solely on migrating NonStop customers to System z now appears to be a rather poorly thought-through strategy for IBM and perhaps it is time for IBM to rethink their choices. There’s such a large population of home-grown solutions on the mainframe today – surely the better choice would be to pursue migrating them to BASE24-eps.

While IBM would push back firmly, and point out how this wouldn’t generate additional mainframe sales or improve its market share, I am not sure what other options are left for them. After all, and as symbolic as it was, IBM may just have to find other rooms to accommodate the mainframe – and ensuring they retain residence in their “parents” home, where the mainframe will make it through the front doors, has to be a key consideration.

And that does make sense to me. IBM blinked, and IBM choked, but after all those folks at IBM sure are able to think, and to revise their strategy! Aren’t they?

Feeling Good? Or praying for a guardian!

For the better part of three months I have been converting to Mac. I have a new MacBook Air and, with the frequent travel that I do, I was drawn to its lightweight design. But I am not finished, and there are still a few small things I need to do before I can finally switch off my PC. I will persevere, mind you, as it was at Tandem in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s where I was first exposed to the world of Mac.

This weekend I am off to Prague to participate in the European BASE24 User Group (EBUG) conference, and I was hoping that I would be giving my presentation from the Mac. But it’s not to be. The picture I have included at the top of this post is of my Simi Valley office, littered with supporting peripherals and documents from both systems, and only after posting to the blog did I notice the jar of antacid tablets next to the PC!

My company emailed warnings to us all, a few weeks back, about the potential damage that could be unleashed come April 1st, as the much-publicized Conficker worm “activates.” As I read the email, I was anxious to comply so I began to follow the instructions for ensuring I had the latest anti-virus protection in place, but I soon became a little confused. When I went back to IT I was politely told that, as a Mac user, none of these warnings were for me. The infiltration of the worm was only affecting PC users –there are some benefits after all from working on a Mac.

Our eldest daughter is a school teacher and she works with the younger crowd. Each year, checking that the students have all been immunized, is an important undertaking. I can remember how, as a child and even though the vaccinations were available, very few of us had them. But today, it’s mandatory and the regulations now in place forces community wide conformance – or no education. And for that, I have to say I am pleased.

Is there too much intrusion by legislators and is it all really necessary? Is regulation a form of insurance? Is compliance just a “feel-good” experience? In other words, do we really go out of our way to see if the steps we take are effective, or are we simply feeling good in just going through the motions? Just as today, in most countries, you cannot drive your car without proof of insurance, does our compliance with the rules (immaterial of what’s a stake or even putting the “remedy” to the test) all that concerns us?

As a society, Australian’s like to have a drink. We go to the beach and we pack the “esky” full of beer. We go to the cricket, or the footie, and load up with as much of the “liquid amber” as we can carry. A few years back a commercial that aired on television depicted an old, dilapidated “ute” loaded down with cases of beer in preparation for the annual visit by the “shearers.” Before the ute heads out, the driver jumps back into the liquor store to get a bottle of sherry “for the misses” but when it’s tossed on top of the ute, the axles snap and the ute collapses on the ground. The only response coming from the driver, “I guess we overdid the sherry!”

But the culture had to change, as the death toll climbed each year (among the worst in the world), and legislation was the only option. The blood alcohol level was dropped to .10, then .08, and finally .05. “Peter Perfect,” Australia’s most famous racing car driver, even changed his racing number to “05!” The police, enforcing the law, equipped special transit busses as test facilities, and then would park them down a side street, pulling over everyone as part of a “random” breath testing program to ensure “compliance!” Within a few short years, what was socially acceptable changed radically. Designated drivers became routine and “protected” through the night – and stories about driving with a buzz were no longer tolerated or considered funny under any circumstance. Complying with the regulations quickly changed Australian society.

IT has changed, as our businesses have changed, and as they have pursued greater market share. Every company can maintain a global presence, and provide real time support, for their customers and business partners. The infrastructure in place that connects us all has ceased being just in support of entertainment and our hobbies, and crossed over into the mainstream of business. Everyone is networked to everyone else – and it’s still only early days as we climb the upward slope of the technology lifecycle, far from showing the maturity associated with other more familiar technologies such as newspapers and television. The internet has changed how mainstream business is done, and the NonStop platform is, once again, squarely in the middle of it all.

Not everyone, however, plays by the “rules” – with so much commerce being undertaken on the web, with so many financial transactions passing between anonymous parties, the temptations to cipher off “just a little” has become a major concern. The teenager who abuses the phone system to make free calls is slowly being overshadowed by the professionals, and each time I return to a former Eastern Bloc country I am reminded of how many smart people there are out there! The corner store is no longer the target, but retailers and banks. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if one day I awoke to the news that a country’s central bank was hit by rogues with PhD’s who redirected wire transfers between countries and stole billions of dollars!

But again, as with child vaccinations, having our cars insured, not drinking and driving – governments are being forced to step in and legislate. Systems have to be secured, identities protected, money and goods shipped only to trusted parties. The scale is just so much greater these days and it’s no longer individuals cashing a couple of bad checks or a credit card holders failing to make payments – fraud is now big business. Economic times have forced highly educated individuals into well-run organizations intent on penetrating any business capable of providing them with something of value.

The NonStop computer, to the best of my knowledge, has never been broken into – but the open system message has the potential to change this – the more commodity applications find a home on NonStop, the more I anticipate something ugly coming along for the ride.

What never ceases to amaze me is that up until the legislature was introduced, and rules put in place, financial institutions were not prepared to take the precautions. Rather than implement sensible security measures, they were prepared to lose money from fraudulent transactions and to write it off as a cost of doing business. It took the Payment Card Industry (PCI) to create a security standard, with stiff penalties imposed for non-compliance, to get the leaders of these financial institutions to start implementing safety measures! And the NonStop user community sits squarely in the cross-hairs with PCI, given more than two thirds of credit card traffic continues to pass through NonStop and its role in support of mission critical applications.

The PCI regulations simply call for financial institutions to comply with a few items. Build and maintain a secure network. Protect cardholder data. Maintain a vulnerability management program. Implement strong access control measures. Regularly monitor and test networks. And maintain an information security policy. The more I look at what’s being called for the more I am perplexed that it even has to be spelt out like this. The NonStop folks I interface with have, for the most part, been aggressively pursing activities like this for years!

PCI is calling for compliance and reminding financial institutions of the penalties associated with non-compliance. Jay walking is illegal, and punishable with costly fines. It never ceases to shock me that we need to be told this, and to be reminded that stepping out into traffic doing 55+ mph can be pretty reckless. It wasn’t until I was stopped, and threatened with a ticket for crossing the road against the red light where I live in Simi Valley, that it became obvious I still needed a little gentle reminding after all. Non-compliance could have fatal consequences.

There is going to be an interesting round table at EBUG 2009, I’m told. The three otherwise competing security vendors will be hosting a round table to gather the requirements from the BASE24 users so that collectively they can work on addressing them before severe penalties for non-compliance will kick in for these companies. In a rare, harmonious show of unity, the security vendors will be attempting to shield BASE24 users from the unkind eyes of the regulator’s auditors.

It’s not so much the fear of being defrauded that prompts financial institutions to take security measures, but being found non-compliant within their community, and being locked-out of the network, that frightens them the more than anything else. NonStop applications may not have been penetrated yet, but it’s no excuse for failing to comply with the regulations.

As for the Mac – I should have it all sorted out soon. As for being secure, and feeling good – there’s something reassuring in knowing that the origins of the NonStop operating system are in a kernel called Guardian!

The horse isn't dead, and neither is the Viper…

It was quite a weekend. I headed back up to San Francisco on my way back to Boulder, Colorado, to meet with GoldenGate partners and being there I took some time out to travel Highway 35 “Skyline Boulevard”. This is a highlight for many motorcycle enthusiasts who take pleasure in diving deep into the corners before whipping their bike through impossible-looking turns. And the picture above is of a famous café midway along the boulevard where refreshments can be had at Alice’s Restaurant.

And the comparison didn’t escape me – last weekend in the Southern California canyons behind Malibu with a visit to the Rock Store and this weekend along the Northern California ridgeline behind Woodside with a visit to Alice’s Restaurant. And both provided amazing scenery and an opportunity to take advantage of the open road. Of course, while stopping by Alice’s I had to get another T-shirt, as it seemed the right thing to do.

In between the meeting with GoldenGate partners I had the opportunity to flip through newspapers business journals and the many car magazines which I always seem to have nearby. Among the collection was a May 2008 issue of Motor Trend and there was a column titled “The temple of doom.” Author Arthur St. Antoine opened with the observation “the world is running out of oil. Global warming threatens our very existence … in fact, cars as we know them are doomed … life is awful and getting worse.”

And the thoughts expressed by St. Antoine mirrored thoughts I had been having this week as I have followed the much publicized antics of Sun as first IBM, and then Oracle, made offers for the company. IBM initially appeared to have won the deal, but after a very short period of due-diligence, revised the offer price downwards and Sun walked away. Later, when Sun attempted to restart the discussions, IBM expressed little enthusiasm, bluntly telling Sun executives that the deal was now dead. No second thoughts on the part of IBM in this instance – for some reason, they wanted out, and fast!

Imagine the heated exchanges that must have followed between CEO Schwartz and Chairman McNealy. Shareholder lawsuits were being prepared. Key stakeholders were furious as an easy out was taken off the table. But then Scott turns to Larry and probably opens the exchange with something like “want to really get Gates upset – how about you owning Java? MySQL?, and a whole lot of smart people that we have done a poor job managing over the years?” What a deal, Larry!

“And Larry,” Scott probably added at some point. “Remember Grid Computing and how you liked it but how it’s now yesterday’s news? Well, I have some pretty exciting cloud solutions – that’s sure to really get up Bill’s nose and upset his plans for .NET global dominance!” Against this background it is no wonder Larry Ellison immediately called Java “the single most important software asset we have ever acquired.”

Now that Larry has his hands on Sun, he must be waking up each morning not believing his good fortune. But for the industry, will life become awful and get worse? Will, for instance, Larry simply “propriet-ize” java? Already owning BEA, with its wonderful collection of web and application server products, and Java development toolkits, will there be one development program for Oracle, and another for all the partners Sun has attracted over the years?

In a recent Motley Fool column, writer Anders Bylund reported on how he called Tibco’s CEO, Vivek Ranadive, “for a candid rundown of what this merger of not-quite-equals means for his business -- and for Silicon Valley at large.” When asked about the many Sun partners committed to Java. Ranadive was reported as having said "The Java community is going to be concerned.” Ranadive then noted how Ellison "likes to buy commodity has-been companies" and dismantle them by gutting R&D efforts on the newly acquired products. "I'm sure it'll be highly accretive at the start, but it's the end of innovation."

Later in the same article, Byland noted that with the acquisition, “Oracle is also buying into a slew of open-source projects under Sun's wing, including database platform MySQL, the OpenSolaris operating system, and MS Office competitor OpenOffice.org.” This apparently drew a chuckled response from Ranadive "Oracle and open source? That's an oxymoron if I ever heard one!" Oracle certainly doesn’t have history on its side when it comes to supporting initiatives across the open source movement.

IBM may now be having second thoughts, but for many companies that have elected to keep the stack provider separate from the platform vendor, this is beginning to appear as though the infamous Borg of Star Trek were more firmly entrenched in the valley than up Seattle way. Returning to the Motor Trend column referenced earlier, the writer added “why do I bring all this up here? Because the same Armageddon mentality now runs rampant in the auto world. People talk about alternative fuels and smaller cars and the ‘end of the golden ages’ as if it’s all downhill from here.” Again, “resistance is futile, you will be assimilated” comes to mind.

Looking at the key verticals Sun competes in, the telco and financial services markets stand out and here they will come up against stiff competition from HP and IBM as they continue to eat into Sun’s market share. These markets are also important to NonStop’s future as well, as they are two extremely significant and profitable marketplaces. But can NonStop shore up its relationship with partners while attracting new entrants, something extremely critical for any future play in these markets?

It is against this background and with these concerns in mind that I have been impressed with a number of regional activities that are under way and that are aimed at finding new partners and at driving more solutions to NonStop. With solid backing from developers in Java, as well as C/C++, and a commitment to middleware offerings that mask the “NonStop within” from the average developer, there is some evidence of traction developing in the partner community.

In the blog posting of February 19, ’09, “Game changers!”, I wrote of the work being done by Californian company Modius and I reported on the port of “their application onto NonStop. Modius provides a Data Center Infrastructure Manager (DCiM) product that is a ‘complete measurement and monitoring solution for generating a single, real-time view of all business critical facilities across the enterprise, including all major data centers, server rooms, branch offices, wiring closets, etc.’ … NonStop in every data center, wow and we should be leaving the management of the data center to NonStop.

In the blog posting of March 19, ‘0, “The Great Divide!”, I took a look at a company in the UK, Erudine, that “have brought to market a ‘Behavior Engine’ with the ability to duplicate business logic – not by cloning code, but by cloning the logic and (optionally) modifying it’s behavior.” And the thought I had here was with this capability, there would be no limit to what application could be built on NonStop adding “after all, when it comes to us ‘learning new things on your HP NonStop’ perhaps we should be letting HP NonStop learn some new things as well!”

Finally, in Asia Pacific – Japan there’s been work to help Opus with the port of their Electra financial switch software. A relatively small company out of India they see the potential to exploit a measure of uncertainty surrounding the availability of future releases of BASE24 on NonStop and although it’s far too early to argue that ACI faces a competitor, I am encouraged to see solutions providers coming to NonStop no matter the circumstances. Opus, with the help of NonStop expertise in the region is doing a very deep port and have implemented a mix of C and C++ code on top of NonStop Tuxedo (as the TP Monitor) and NS SQL/MX (as the data base). The company has been particularly impressed with the scalability NonStop affords, and I will be watching the progress they make in the financial services marketplace as I will be watching Modius and Erudine.

Talking about new partners with new solutions and infrastructure has been something only lightly touched upon in previous blog postings, and when viewed alongside of what we see happening at Oracle, there may be a lot more solutions providers taking a renewed interest in the product offerings of HP. And NonStop should score points with many of them.

The Motor Trend column concluded with “most of us long ago traded horses for cars, but you can still ride a horse. I’d bet that in 2050 you’ll still be able to drive a vintage Viper – and your tire-smoking fuel-cell Vette. How can I be so optimistic about the future? Hey, I have history on my side.” And across the IT landscape we know all too well that change is constant, and watching Sun be swallowed up within the greater Oracle is only the latest example of change and there are no signs I have lost any of my optimism.

Partners are everything in today’s vendor ecosystems – and should you mess with them, they are hard to re-recruit. There will be many looking at their options following Sun’s assimilation into Oracle and I am very positive about the impact this could have on NonStop. After all, with NonStop there’s history, and over the years, it’s been pretty good! Like the horse, and the Viper, NonStop is here to stay!

And that is the point!

This weekend I took advantage of the weather that makes Spring time in Southern California famous worldwide, drawing so many of us to its shoreline. The picture above shows the Santa Monica pier where I had lunch on Saturday. On the right day, the mix of light and scenery can be extremely intoxicating, and finding a little local seafood, and a crisp New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, makes for a very mellow day.

After driving the coast road to Santa Monica, on Sunday I opted to take a parallel course, a few miles further inland. This time I drove down the Mulholland Highway, east of where it becomes Mulholland Drive and one of the favorite addresses for the rich and famous of Hollywood. However, for me the have-to-go-to place on Mulholland Highway is the Rock Store, where everyone with an interest in sports and custom motorcycles, and high-performance cars, just has to go.

This is a favorite hangout for California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who rides to the Rock Store whenever he’s in town. And of course, he’s often accompanied by Jay Leno. On Sunday, even before we pulled to the side of the road, there was a swarm of people at one end of the unpaved turn-in, and sure enough, there was Jay.

Jay has to be the biggest fan of everything mechanized and there’s hardly a vehicle developed, anywhere in the world, where at least one example hasn’t found its way into Jay’s Garage. Some of the vehicles have never seen a production line, hand built by Jay and bordering on the bizarre, and we ran across Jay driving his most adventurous foray into car building to date. Not his Jet Bike that’s powered by an Allison 250-C18 Engine that’s usually found inside the smallish Bell Jet Ranger helicopter, but his brand new EcoJet car!

Riding with Jay was Jim Hall, his chief engineer who oversaw the development of the EcoJet with the goal, according to Jay, “to design and build a car that ran on environmentally friendly, renewable bio-diesel fuel and that didn't drive like a Prius.” Jay also said, according to his web site, that it “makes harvest time the only time of year when there'll be plenty of fuel available, but that's beside the point.”

Jay was only too happy to talk about his inroads into more eco-friendly transportation as he showed off his bio-diesel fueled jet car. Should readers like to now more of the EcoJet pictured below, check out Jay’s Garage at: http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/cars/ecojet_shell.shtml

“The heart of the EcoJet is a 650+ horsepower Honeywell LT-101 turbine engine, which sits inside a modified Corvette Z06,” Jay explains on the web site, and clearly visible behind the rear glass window in the photo above. Essentially, this is the same engine that is found in the Coast Guard’s rescue helicopters, and certainly ensures the EcoJst exceeds the goal of not driving like a Prius!

With an exhaust temperature at idle of 850+ Fahrenheit and standing, as I was on Sunday, only a few feet away from the horizontal outlets, it’s hard to imagine this vehicle as your daily drive. And the picture here is of me, somewhat overwhelmed by it all, and contemplating whether to bring out the marshmallows!

Jay certainly knows how to pull a crowd, and his behavior and antics ensured a large crowd quickly gathered around him. The on-duty police that were present (two patrol cars had pulled off the road) were just as curious about the car as everyone else.

And it reminded me of how our behavior does group us into tribes, as I recalled in my last post When two tribes go to war ..., and to modern-day equivalents – the groups, clubs, associations, and societies we are so often drawn to. When I served on the ITUG Board (2000 – 2006), I saw first-hand the value that came from participating in NonStop user groups. For me, being part of this group and having access to unfiltered information from other vendors, users, and HP was reward enough for the time I spent in empty hotel rooms and stranded in airport lounges.

This past week had me engaged in a lively email exchange with a couple of past Chairs of ITUG and we reminisced on what we liked most about the NonStop community. Each of us felt our time had been too short, and the transitions following our departures weren’t always as smooth as they could have been. I am sure incoming Chairmen couldn’t wait to see the last of their predecessors but too often the experiences and history that is part of the richness of the user community went with the departure of past Chairs.

However, there is a part of the community that does enjoy continuity of leadership well beyond anything I experienced on the board of ITUG – and that is the Regional User Groups (RUGs). Part of me remains envious of the bond that they enjoy with their community – there’s never any confusion when I ask participants who their RUG leader is. It’s always an immediate response that it’s Fred, or Bill, or Kathy - followed by a raised hand pointing me towards the individual.

As the seasons change, and the greens of Spring become the golds of Harvest, so too we see the times changing for user communities. At one time there were 30+ active RUGs worldwide, with a few more just waiting to be recognized. When RUG leader receptions were held at the start of each ITUG Summit, the room was always full to overflowing. There are far fewer active RUGs today, and the list on the Connect web site is a dramatic reminder of how times have changed.

But the community is evolving – the days of the all-NonStop shop are long gone. Back when NonStop provided an intelligent, fault-tolerant, front-end to much larger mainframe environments, the NonStop staff were as loyal to the product and to their colleagues within the NonStop community as they ever were to their peers within the data center. But as specialists were swapped for generalists, as the data centers were outsourced, and as management began to trade numbers of nines for more homogeneous solutions, the “community” that was NonStop began to quickly erode.

There is still a NonStop community but today, to paraphrase the physicists with their laws on energy conservation, it’s just different. As with energy that cannot be created or destroyed (in an isolated system), it only changes its form, so too has the community changed its form. It’s now online, in chat rooms and participating in forums – a virtual community spanning the globe.

I am often reminded of how sites running NonStop are alarmed by the shortage of skilled staff, but perhaps they shouldn’t be. A knowledgeable and highly skilled talent pool remains and it’s a community whose “form” has simply changed. Today, whether it’s iPhones, Blackberries, Laptops and Netbooks, it continues to be well-informed about NonStop, and I have to wonder if this “virtual” resource could be better utilized. I am not trivializing or downplaying the shortage of experienced NonStop technical skills (that’s real enough for many of us), but rather, focusing attention on the manner in which we elect to tap into the resources that still exists.

In a separate exchange with one RUG leader I remarked on how one result of social networking is that the skilled resources we need are out there, connected to one social network or another, and I asked if RUGs could view themselves as being well-positioned to connect skills with needs, virtually? Not supporting a jobs-board as of old, but with RUGs supporting and promoting entrance paths into the wealth of knowledge they know is present across their region!

Jay Leno did return to the Rock Store, and the picture here is of him and the EcoJet approaching me as I crossed the road. What really caught my attention, this time around, was the instantaneous appearance of mobile phones with cameras, as everyone began to snap photos and immediately email them to all their friends. Those few who were present to see Jay were only the tip-of-the-iceberg and the virtual community was many times bigger, scattered around the globe. But within seconds, they were all as well-informed as those who were present.

As the community increasingly becomes virtual, will the role of RUGs be as a clearing house for ideas, and the go-to place for access to NonStop expertise? Given access to a VPN these highly skilled resources can equally be at home migrating to a new NonStop, running QA tests, and even diagnosing complex integration problems.

Do we really need to see them on-site, populating cavernous expanses of cubicles, before we value their contributions and come to appreciate the knowledge and expertise they have? After all, unlike the time of change that comes with each season, the skilled resources we need remain active within social networks, and the knowledge they retain cannot be as easily dismissed, as Jay had so easily done with his EcoJet car, with a “but that's beside the point!”

As well-networked as we are today, I have to believe such a shift will be practically impossible to derail and the importance and influence of the RUGs will only get stronger. I have to believe that this is already becoming widely understood and I will be anxiously awaiting the outcome.