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Changes of approach; changes of storylines! And NonStop anchors it all!


NonStop vendors are not only capitalizing on changes taking place with NonStop they are becoming more prolific with their marketing outreach …

I am a stickler for clean windscreens. I have to admit I like to see where I am going and I just cannot stand smudges and blurs impeding my sight lines. I am also a focused driver on our highways, being one of those unusual drivers these days who simply lock away their mobile phone – no, you cannot talk to me. “Just leave a message, maybe I'll call,” sang the Eagle’s Joe Walsh many years ago. Right now I have a Jeep that is in dire need of having its windscreen cleaned, but as it’s our go-to vehicle I just keep putting it off. Maybe this weekend the car gets a thorough cleaning?

On the other hand, vision is something that has been the subject of a lot of talk of late among the members of the NonStop community – yes, there have been lots of RUG meetings each providing ample opportunity to talk to NonStop enthusiasts on topics ranging from the mundane Java issues to what’s happening with virtualized NonStop and even Blockchain.

The consensus view among these NonStop enthusiasts is that we are seeing a vastly different NonStop product line unfolding and it’s really going to be offering NonStop users a variety of options. It’s going to be a lot more about choice than ever before! Talking of choice and of clear vision and yes cars, it was a whole lot of fun touring the Porsche factory at Leipzig with GTUG. Walking the factory floor was one thing, but then capitalizing on a “taxi ride” around their FIA-approved race track was even more fun.

Hybrid IT is a reflection on transitions under way within the data center. It’s becoming easy to see the new being introduced even as we continue to depend on the old. Traditional computing has to stay the course even as cloud computing makes its presence felt. It is clear to every IT professional that there are major changes of direction and approach under way and where computing is being served-up on a pay-as-you-use basis. As a matter of fact, this is a new dynamic that the industry is only just coming to terms with– there’s no place for big iron if it’s only occasionally used.

At this time of year many of the vendors we know are releasing their quarterly financial results. There are always updates on organization structure and on changes to product lines. There is also a predisposition to paint a rosy picture of the future as each vendor sees it. In the latest financial results from HPE published a few days ago, HPE CEO Antonio Nero told financial analysts that

“… HPE Next is our company-wide initiative to re-architect HPE to deliver on our strategy and drive new wave of shareholder value. It is all about simplification, execution and innovation … The changes we are making through HPE Next will not only improve our cost structure. It will also give us a significant long-term competitive advantage.”

Yes, HPE has a very clear vision of the future and by all accounts has translated its vision into a strategy against which it is successfully executing.

But the topic of having a clear vision has other implications when it comes to a solutions vendor such as OmniPayments and it shouldn’t come as
a surprise to any member of the NonStop community when I say that there has been a very distinct uptick in visibility of OmniPayments of late. This year, OmniPayments has been everywhere; RUG meetings and industry events have seen plenty of orange banners promoting OmniPayments. And for good reason; as I see it, the company is on a roll – it is winning new business in both the banking and the retail markets and is possibly the most unabashed fan of NonStop. What’s not to like about this?

While some of the choices on offer today for consuming NonStop are very much in their infancy, this hasn’t slowed down the OmniPayments development team as it has brought to market support for all three major NonStop options – traditional, virtualized and as-a-Service. Surprised? For one, I am not surprised at all as Yash made the commitment to NonStop a long time ago and has almost single handedly turned the marketplace for payments solutions on its head as he is delivering possibly the best price/performance configurations of all.

And yet, how many members of the NonStop community have kept up with what OmniPayments has been doing of late? Starting with the basics, if you have your own NonStop hardware already deployed on-premise, then you can license the OmniPayments solution in a number of different ways. Yes, OmniPayments continues as a software solution for that section of the NonStop community. If you do not have the requisite NonStop hardware available then you can purchase NonStop from your HPE sales team, or alternatively OmniPayments can put the whole package together for you – OmniPayments is the only HPE appointed NonStop VAR for all of South America.

But wait; there’s even more! Ever since NonStop X began shipping, OmniPayments set up a series of data centers around the world in support of OmniPayments served up as Software-as-a-Service. OmniCloudX gives you immediate support of this option even as it lays the foundation for running atop virtualized NonStop. OmniPayments is already working on this latest option for NonStop from HPE and I think that this is a really good move on the part of OmniPayments.

Yes, just as HPE is advocating today for NonStop in general – payments processing can be consumed on-premise and on your hardware but also as SaaS from off-premise on OmniPayments NonStop X systems not to mention from out of a cloud deployed by OmniPayments. And there’s even more news about to break. For anyone who has noticed the uptick in visibility of OmniPayments and is following them on LinkedIn, watching the promotions being made for upcoming participation at RUG meetings, you will have seen one more very important development.

Yash isn’t just talking about Blockchain, or trying to educate the NonStop community about its potential benefits for NonStop users. Quite the opposite – he is doing something with Blockchain. There is work under way to integrate the Mission Critical Distributed Ledger Technology (MCDLT) on NonStop into OmniPayments. From the NYTUG RUG Meeting, came the following post to LinkedIn:

Blockchain is a very powerful technology. Keith Moore from HPE is kicking off #NYTUG2018 and talking about how this technology fits into the NonStop world.

Stay tuned to learn more about OmniPayments’ Blockchain implementation!

Missed it? Well, there is a lot more to come shortly about the actual application being developed but suffice to say, while other vendors are talking up possibilities and potentials, Yash has directed his team to capitalize on all the hard work the NonStop team has been doing to bring R3: Corda to NonStop and NonStop SQL/MX. I have my own ideas about these new products and the value they will provide, but I will await confirmation from Yash before I write anything more. Although it you know something about KYC and AML and what these acronyms mean and yes, all that it currently entails (and the heavy costs financial institutions are currently incurring to pursue), then you may have an early idea about where Yash is headed.

For as long as I have been covering HPE and NonStop I cannot recall a time when so much has been created by NonStop development – yes, “new logos” are being added to the NonStop community and some of the biggest traditional NonStop users are reconsidering their usage of NonStop – we went to Linux but we didn’t quite get the availability or indeed the simplicity (of development and operations) we thought we would – is it easy to get back to NonStop? Well, it sure is …

And perhaps it is this very serious uptick in NonStop product development that is part of the reason why NonStop vendors like OmniPayments have become more visible in the marketplace of late. There is a potential to penetrate new markets with solutions on NonStop able to be consumed any way you need it and isn’t this a good thing for every stakeholder in the NonStop ecosystem? Isn’t encouraging for us to see competitive product utilizing the latest technology being supported by NonStop?

I read a lot. It goes with the territory as a blogger. Probably more accurate would be to say I read everything – whatever comes in the mail and yes, if it’s prefaced by “Richard, this is a good read” I even click on links sent to me. In the introduction to a popular column in a car magazine, its author wrote:

“The joke goes that we live in the future. You know, that cliché we trot out for anything amazing and tech-related – mind-blowing gifts, something ahead of schedule.”

Followed a little later with:

“The novelist Warren Ellis once noted that the future sneaks up on us, in the fringes of daily life … it suggest keeping a weather eye open for reasons to be stoked, wary, or both.”

And it kind of reminds me that to some extent, over these past couple of years, NonStop has crept up on us. HPE has invested in NonStop to where they have trotted out something amazing – NonStop consumed any way we want. More than that, what HPE NonStop has developed is probably more closely aligned with customer requirements than at any other time in its history. Yes, NonStop too is on a roll!  

Perhaps it’s time for many more of us to clean away the grime that has collected on our “IT windscreens” and to take a really good long look at the new NonStop and the many ways NonStop can now be consumed. But you may want to be wearing sunglasses as what you see could be a lot brighter than you expected. And if this is all a bit much to take in then make sure you head to HPE Discover. I will be there and I will be on the exhibition floor so look for me and perhaps we can have coffee and if you need to, let’s just check out your eyesight to see if you share the same vision for NonStop as I now do.

Comments

Craig Lawrance said…
R3:Corda offers a world of possibilities for new applications. OmniPayments new initiative around KYC (Know-your-Customer) as a service and the Fraud enhancement of Anti-Money-Laundering is indeed one to watch!

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