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Plans are made, tickets are booked, and Mother Nature plays havoc… Yeah, I was booked on a flight to Baltimore on Monday, October 29. Who knew? Of course the flight got cancelled and plans had to be changed. Could have been a lot worse, I know… Click on Richard's picture and check the T Shirt he's wearing. Yes that's him behind the helm of Chardonnay II off Santa Cruz, California. I have been getting nostalgic lately, looking at what happened over the years – how technology changed our lives and our careers evolved trying to catch up. Oh, yes, I remember 1989 Tandem Computers Annual Report – and for those who long ago have forgotten the specifics, I was featured in it, with an artist-rendered likeness. The SNAX/CDF product had been released, and for me, having been a part of this then modern development project felt fantastic! I was a part of something significant, it mattered, customers awaited it ready to deploy! Fast forward to 2012 – yup, 23 years later...

Some days I look at what happened over the years, and sadly, I can’t say that all that happened was planned, but for sure there was always a goal. My goals are always set way high, just in case I achieve them, so when we first looked at the NonStop managed clouds demo all I could think of was just how cool it would be to partner with HP, get the “Sydney boys” (Managing Director, Peter Shell, Chief Architect, Neil Coleman, and Development VP, Dave Finnie) involved, and come out with a world class solution for those who can’t afford to lose their transactions in the clouds. Richard gave me this look that said “in your dreams”, but unless you have dreams you just stay put, and do not get any closer to your goals. So we started talking with the HP guys demonstrating the product, Justin in particular (that’s Justin Simonds), Richard wrote a few posts to the NonStop community blog promoting the effort, we sure admired what they’ve done, and we really liked them and their enthusiasm....

There’s no denying just how important people – users, vendors, consultants, analysts – are to NonStop. And the contributions keep on coming; without which we wouldn’t have the NonStop system of today. I came to NonStop via a very circuitous route – one that involved several states and a couple of countries. It was 1987 and I had returned to the United States to work for the second time and it was with Netlink (or Systems Technology, as it was known when I joined the company in 1986) who had set up shop in Raleigh, North Carolina. Among the names and faces that were involved with Netlink were folks like Mark Hutchens and Terry Bishop who I was to reunite with many years later at Insession as well as Rick Ploen who many of us know from time he spent with ACI Worldwide, and more recently comForte. It was while in Raleigh that I first came into contact with Tandem Computers. Midway through 1987, Netlink CEO Paul Wood called me to his office to outline his conversations with Tandem C...

There is a message about NonStop to be taken into the enterprise as the NonStop system is proving beneficial and indeed appropriate whenever topics such as Java, Big Data and Cloud Computing are raised – it’s just going to take a lot more engagement by all of us to make it matter!     Road warriors are an integral part of most vendor companies. We all know who they are, and they rarely miss a user event or convention. For them six or seven flights in a week to visit four or five accounts is merely routine, and living on the edge with respect to not knowing whether flights will be cancelled, or a critical PC (or router or line) needed for a presentation will fail, or even a last minute cancellation by a user, only strengthens their determination. I know; for thirty plus years, this was the only life I knew, and while it was interrupted a couple of times as I was given different assignments, I seemed to always gravitate back to this lifestyle, but of late, and with the wo...