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Gliding up the river; pushing deeper into the landscape


Infrastructure has dominated the conversations of late and for a very good reason – NonStop continues to contribute!




Traversing Europe via rivers and canals is always a cool thing to do and this time, we are actually getting to see the countryside in a little more detail than previously experienced. You see, way back in the early 2000s, we booked a river cruise to take us from Munich (Passau) to the Black Sea. Unfortunately, two days into the voyage we were advised upon arrival in Vienna that there would be no further movement of the vessel – the Danube had risen too high for the boat to fit under the bridges. Of course, we didn’t mind, as a week in Vienna was perhaps not too shabby a second prize! But it did remind us of the importance of infrastructure – don’t make the bridges high enough and your all-important tourist traffic stays put!

Business took us to Amsterdam and with a chance to check in on folks in Frankfurt and then spend some time in Budapest gave us the opportunity to play with the dates and to fit in a river cruise – we have visited these cities in the past but have never capitalized on yet another form of transportation. Already this year we have taken the train between Frankfurt and Munich and another train between London and Edinburgh. For the Trip to Las Vegas for HPE Discover, it was the company command center and then for the trip to Dallas and N2TUG, it was by plane.

All of which is to say that even as we all acknowledge the importance of infrastructure, it’s equally as important to know you have options. Choice is very important when it comes to optimizing data and processing and in this regard, the HPE NonStop community is particularly blessed given the investments of late by HPE in NonStop!

Have you visited the HPE web site recently? Have you looked at how HPE is bracketing its product lines with major topics of interest for IT?

Ignite – Innovation with Hybrid Cloud: Accelerate speed and agility with your right mix of Hybrid Cloud
Redefine – Experience at the Edge: From edge to cloud, securely connect users and things and seamlessly orchestrate apps and data
Unlock – Insights from all your Data: Turn data at rest into data in action. Extract the unseen value in your data with intelligent storage and AI
Proven Expertise – From HPE Pointnext services: Accelerate the transformation of you technology, people and economics

There you have it! In a couple of well thought-through phrases you have the focus on Hybrid IT (the Core / Cloud), the Intelligent Edge, Data and analytics and yes, Services. I have to say, though, the increased emphasis on Data (and Data Analytics) is coming at a time when we are coming to terms with the significance of the Core and the Edge, but it’s not surprising as HPE is putting a lot of energy into promoting storage. The only thing missing here is Security but as HPE is only too happy to acknowledge, security answers lie close to the metal and with the understanding that perimeters will be breached. It’s not surprising then to see it referenced as it is in HPE’s promotion of the edge.

Then again, the key words – Ignite, Redefine, Unlock and then Proven – are all emotive words. Passions truly do run high within IT whenever these subjects are raised and as a community it is good to see NonStop remains part of the conversation.  Ever tried talking to someone about security and suggest that perhaps it is all futile in the end and see what response you generate. I know of no other group within the NonStop vendor community as passionate about what they do than those NonStop vendors supplying security products. In a way, that’s good news for the NonStop community and yet, I come from the school that proposes making everything useless to the outside world – crack the safe and you will only find useless and incomprehensible dross!

However, even with these well thought-through phrases you cannot escape how it’s all about infrastructure and its ultimate success for HPE is dependent upon solutions vendors. For very good reasons HPE is not in the solutions business, although for a while, we all liked what HPE was doing for telcos with the solution that HPE was providing, but today, I can’t say I am aware of the status of this application. I have been told that before virtualization of NonStop was even announced the group responsible for this application has been busily porting to Linux and I am left to wonder yet again whether HPE’s teams are always on the same page. Nevertheless, I am a big fan of NonStop pushing deeper into new markets and have my fingers crossed for more news coming from manufacturing, distribution and yes, retail.

When it comes to infrastructure, I will leave it to former President of Insession Technologies, Tony Parkinson, for describing infrastructure best when he wrote to me recently suggesting, “You could build the most beautiful house in the neighborhood … BUT if it didn’t have the wiring and plumbing behind the walls, it would be uninhabitable.” Furthermore, according to Tony, “Tools, middleware and infrastructure technology are the lifeblood of any core banking system, payments platform, cash management project, FX Trading environment, etc. etc.” On this point, Tony is correct – tools, middleware and infrastructure are indeed the lifeblood giving sustenance to any application. In fact, major projects are initiated only when the infrastructure is in place to support them and HPE is perhaps wise to know that it’s time to “ignite” our innovation when it comes to Hybrid Cloud and a place where you find NonStop.

For me, ignition always goes with lift off – anyone who lived through the space race of the 1960s knows all about lift off and it’s more than appropriate for HPE to use such a keyword. It’s too easy to dismiss this as just more marketing hype but for the NonStop community the compelling story line here is that HPE ignited its own move to Hybrid Cloud when it elected to exploit the attributes of NonStop at the very center of its data center modernization program. For anyone that hasn’t figured it out already, Oracle and its approach to databases is pure legacy and the market is punishing Oracle for being slow to modernize. Its spending on companies has once again seen it taking large investment write-offs. If you missed it, check out Oracle shutting down the operations of its cloud applications subsidiary, Ravello Systems Inc.

I don’t want to call out Oracle specifically other than to say it fueled many new projects within HPE when it challenged the former HP over Itanium – a total misread of where the new HPE had planned to head all along. On the other hand, it is indicative of how brutal the infrastructure business has become where choice together with flexibility and speed-to-market command a premium today.  Did you read the July, 2019, issue of NonStop Insider where you would have come across interesting commentary from our own Randall Becker on infrastructure on NonStop and how easy the new NonStop is to embrace new development methodologies. Check out this latest issue - https://www.nonstopinsider.com/editorials/issue-3-10-editorial-july-19/

Ignite! Redefine! Unlock! Who says HPE marketing isn’t doing a good job these days? Having spent a short time with both the Chief Marketing Officer and the Chief Communications Officer of HPE while at HPE Discover, it was certainly refreshing to hear firsthand of how they were focused on revamping marketing across the board. The real story here is that we have a new HPE focused on the needs of enterprises and there is no question that the issues of the day for these enterprises are complex, requiring a delicate balancing act that appreciates the need to preserve traditional systems while introducing clouds, virtualization, containers all in a highly composable environment that helps them reduce the cost of IT at a time when IT is the center of all that they are doing. Yes, it’s a digital world and yes, it’s a world where IT differentiates all enterprises products and services. There is a future coming where no CEO will rise to the top job without time spent in IT.

Europe’s rivers give us a great way of getting around and a viable alternative to taking the train or driving. Yes, it’s a little slower but work into your weekend plans some time on a boat and you can cover a lot of ground by water – eve as you can observe so much infrastructure pass you by. For the NonStop community, NonStop will always be about infrastructure even as will always be about providing a unique blend of tools, middleware, databases, languages and much more that are the true lifeblood of IT. It’s preservation of all that is truly NonStop – availability, scalability, data integrity / security – continue to this day as NonStop moves to being a collection of virtual machines (along with traditional machines where appropriate).

Its perseverance too in face of so many nay-sayers to emerge, modern and with options we had not thought possible just a short time ago, make it truly an impressive participant in HPE’s product portfolio. All of which is to say we can expect, as a community, to see NonStop pushing even deeper into the very heart of the IT landscape and of that, we should all be very proud of the ongoing commitment HPE is making to NonStop!   

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