Real Time View

For the past five years I have ended posts to this blog with observations about topics of interest to us all and each year, those observations have covered a lot of territory. And through it all, NonStop continues to remain relevant and there’s little to suggest any lessening in its importance for IT. Especially in 2011!     The year is winding down and already here in Boulder we are into our third or fourth snow fall of the season. Yes, there will definitely be a white Christmas this year, although I suspect we will not see snow falling on the day, but with more than ten inches having already fallen overnight it will be a while before it clears away. The picture above was taken looking out from the kitchen and across to the BBQ. A rather forlorn-looking place under this much snow, and a distant reminder of the good times of summer! In a few days I will be in the Florida Keys, escaping the cold of the Rockies and catching a few rays! I have only been back there once si...

While business has taken me far afield for the past two months, I still found time to write and post to this and other blogs. For the NonStop community there’s now a body of work, frequently cross-referenced by other writers, which can be easily viewed no matter which media channel they prefer! I will refrain this time from starting out this post by saying something like back again in Boulder as paging through the posts in this blog looking for a reference I noted that several posts had started out with this observation. But for more than eight weeks I have experienced, for yet one more time, what it is like to be a road warrior. The picture above was taken on a previous vacation aboard the cruising yacht, the Windstar’s Wind Spirit and while in Italy, only a few weeks ago, I had sampled the delights of life at sea with the Seabourn yacht, Spirit. The coincidence of being aboard vessels bearing the name Spirit wasn’t lost on me particularly as I headed for my first drink each even...

At a time when lines are becoming blurred and where the very definition of what we consider luxurious is changing it’s encouraging to read of yet more vendors enjoying success on the NonStop – a rich bounty for all within the NonStop community. And a great feeling as well! But what truly is the biggest luxury of all? It was barely six weeks ago that I posted from Atlanta, Georgia, and yet here I am today in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Pretty much a straight line diagonal from where I was only a short time ago. When I pull into the driveway later this weekend, I will have added 10,000 miles to the SUVs odometer. But the trip up here didn’t follow a direct path, as I squeezed in a weekend in San Diego and the picture above is of me admiring the view from the hotel alongside San Diego’s famous harbor. While I have no emotional bonds with the Cadillac Escalade and I abuse it so frequently, it is still an effective way to soak up the long distances I cover. The thought of i...

I love to travel. I like to observe what's going on at new places. And when I return to places I visited in the past, I like to check out what's changed. When it comes to work and the tasks I pursued, there is still much I can learn from reminiscing! My third time to Rome has proved to be better than I can recall past trips having been – a much more relaxed pace, and my business pursuits turned out to be easier than I anticipated. The first time to Rome, I joined a tour that hit all the main tourist draws whereas the second came at the end of a longer stay in the Mediterranean, and during the height of the summer tourist season where the heat and wind made the stay anything but pleasant. The picture above is of me taking a brief pause along the Via dei Fori Imperiali! Following a brief exchange, before I left, with Randy Meyer who heads HP NonStop’s Product Management group, and on his recommendation, with days to spare between meetings in Venice and Rome I elected to f...

HP’s new CEO Meg Whitman has hit the deck running and it’s clear to see HP is in transition – yes, today, they welcomed a new director to the board – one who could agitate for even more change. But will this generate good news for the NonStop community? In the weeks before I left Boulder, Colorado, winter had sank its teeth deep into the land. After three sizable storms that saw the temperatures drop rapidly from the 80s to the 30s and worse, the citizens were finally adjusting to the transition, although winter came this year much sooner than they had expected. Shedding shorts and Tee’s for layers of warm clothing brings with it realization that the transition has only begun, and that by the end of the year we will have seen much worse weather descending on us all. The picture to the left was taken at first light, as we headed to our local Starbucks! However, this past weekend has seen me conduct business in Venice and board a small vessel for a run down the Adriatic Sea, stopping ...

While I am out travelling and meeting folks, it gives me the opportunity to revisit the topic of social media and for the HP NonStop community, activity has picked up with more engaged in discussions than I have seen before. And yet, there's always opportunity for even greater participation - join in! As I prepare this post I am wrapping up my brief stay in Venice and I am about to head to Croatia. Not by car, but by the only easy way to see as much of the coast of Croatia as possible – a rather comfortable small vessel able to pull into the smaller ports. However, the downside is that I am often left to make small talk with others – something I completely avoid doing when I take to America’s interstates and byways. Invariably, when I am with other travelers, the conversations turn to “and yes, what do you do?” Of course this is a reference to the vocation I pursue and when it comes out that I write and that I provide commentaries and opinion papers, the response isn’t always o...

For me travel is always educational and a time to catch up on the news - magazines, newspapers and the internet. And so, yes another stock exchange goes down - this time, closer to home. The Australian Stock Exchange. It sure does beg the question when it comes to staying in business - what does it truly cost when you're unable to support your clients? Road trips represent time to reflect and on my recent drive to Atlanta this proved to be the case. I am passionate about driving and this year has seen me driving to Northern and Southern California with stops in Las Vegas; to Phoenix, Arizona through the back country to the north east of that city that also took in Albuquerque; to Chicago as well as to Minneapolis (two separate trips but via Omaha both times) in addition to this recent escapade. Throw in separate weekend trips to the wine country of western Colorado as well as excursions to Aspen and Telluride to catch the fall colors that make Colorado the colorful state that it ...

With all the talk and discussions around Cloud Computing of late, it seems that it is all that today’s CIOs are prepared to consider as a strategy for their business. But it is a technology and this may not be the right thing to do … Walking the streets of Atlanta, just outside the hotel where I had been staying, I came to the Peachtree 200 Conference Center and while the building held little architectural appeal what was outside, parked on the road, caught my eye immediately. Curbside was a 1960s era Fiat 500 flanked by a new 2012 Fiat 500, and the picture above was taken by the Fiat event manager overseeing the launch program for Atlanta – yes, he just walked up to me and asked if he could take the photo I was trying to shoot by myself. A crowd had gathered alongside the cars and someone asked if the new FIAT 500 was a hybrid, and then another person asked whether it was FIAT’s plan to offer an all-electric version. Among the responses I heard coming from the FIAT crew ...

It was just a report in the local paper over the mishaps by the gridiron team but it summed up how I felt about much that’s been written about NonStop of late. The good news is that users remain happy and continue to support the community! I like to travel, a topic of another post this week, but I also like sports of all types; having played Rugby League and Rugby Union in my youth, and approached while at High School with a contract to join the junior squad of a professional team (Balmain “Tigers”, as I recall), paperwork my parents refused to even acknowledge (and thankfully, as I look back, as I followed another team, Manly “Sea Eagles”, which just won on the world’s biggest stage – the National Rugby League Grand Final). Football of all codes continues to interest me, and yes, I like to drive cars and ride motorcycles, and the picture above is of Margo, enjoying the colors of fall outside Telluride, Colorado, taken during our most recent outing in the San Juan mountains. Deep i...

When the invitation arrived from HP India to speak at their InNUG user event there was absolutely no way I was going to turn it down. And after spending time with the NonStop community in India I was so pleased that I had elected to go! There has been one country I have somehow missed visiting during all the decades I have been in IT. I landed there once on a flight from Paris to Bangkok, but never left the plane. And yet, whenever conversations turn to IT, the work being done in this country rarely escapes a mention. Of course, I am talking about India. And the picture above is of me poolside, very early in the morning, in the town of Kovalam, pretty much at the bottom of the Indian peninsula. About 8 degrees north of the equator, I later learnt. I had been fortunate enough to have received an invite from HP to speak at the Indian NonStop user group event – InNUG. Coming right after the successful event for the Australian NonStop user group, OzTUG, as well as following the good...