Real Time View

Seated at a bar made up of repurposed shipping containers prompted me to think of NonStop. Just as shipping containers can be repurposed, with the arrival of Virtualized NonStop can we see NonStop being repurposed as well?     It was way, way back in 2009 when I wrote a post to this blog site about how HPE was packaging up shipping containers loaded with blades and peripherals and marketing them as a specialty POD – actually, as a “Performance-Optimized Datacenter” and to read more about this, check out the post of July 2, 2009, Common standards, uncommon advantages! I have no real idea of how successful this market campaign proved to be but I only heard that the program was discontinued sometime last year.  And the reason? HPE was moving beyond blades, where today it was all about hyperconverged infrastructure, hybrid IT and yes, Synergy. Perhaps I was too quick to dismiss Synergy as just software as the more I have dug into HPE Synergy, the first thing I notice...

Given time to reflect  on NonStop particularly as we hear more about where it is heading, should be encouraging for all in the NonStop community – vendors included! It’s been a while since I caught something at the right time and in this case, the right time just happened as I picked up my iPhone and snapped a picture of a sunset. Margo and I have now spent well over three weeks in our company command center – out temporary office and home – and we have been on the move for a lot of that time. From that initial drive down to Dallas for N2TUG and then across to Las Vegas for HPE Discover, it’s all been covered in recent posts to various blogs. But as the picture above depicts so well, sometimes you just manage to capture something at the right time from a place that proves to be just right! There is an upside to long drives across America’s interstates. You get plenty of time to just sit back and think! To reflect! And with the many customer events of late, where the focus ha...

Time spent at user events these past two weeks – small and large – has made me more appreciative of just how well NonStop embraces HPE’s vision for IT Living life out of an RV, on a somewhat permanent basis, where there’s nothing to fall back to other than a hotel room, is something each and every one of us should experience at least once in a lifetime. It’s been a couple of weeks since we turned our backs on the only home Margo and I have ever bought together and resorting to a gypsy lifestyle wasn’t something we ever thought was in the plans. And yet, even as it hasn’t gone entirely to plan, it’s given us a whole lot of time to discuss recent events. By recent events I mean the time we have spent with the NonStop community. In just two weeks we have covered 3,000 plus miles and visited with NonStop folks in Dallas for N2TUG as well as the much bigger event staged by HPE, the annual Americas instance of 2017 HPE Discover. But what have we learnt and just as importantly, what have ...

A post from the road – the road, that is, to Las Vegas! HPE Discover 2017 has rolled around once again and for me it’s a mixed bag of anticipation together with whatever might happen that is unexpected … The week began with us pulling out of the street where we had lived for nearly two decades to pursue the life of technology gypsies! Homeless; no fixed abode, with just a PO Box to keep us connected with the rest of the world. And no longer in possession of keys to the front door of the house we had made our home and where over the years we had entertained many of you. Of course this isn’t a permanent change for Margo and me, but life on the road has always been something we have enjoyed. The timing, of course, couldn’t have been any better as we had committed to attending the HPE NonStop customer event in Dallas – N2TUG. Followed, just a week later, by arguably the more important HPE big tent marketing event, HPE Discover 2017! If you look under Labels, to the right of these ...