A
short stroll past bank branch offices in New Zealand had me thinking about the
role of services in support of NonStop systems and in NonStop migrations …
While the trip across the Tasman had a distinct business focus – and yes, we were able to compare the service offerings of both Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) and ANZ – each evening we found ways to unwind and to simply kick-back and enjoy the ever changing seascape. I will be covering the topic shortly in a separate blog for the financial services industry, but to walk into a “branch office” of BNZ where it was all self-service supported by a wide array of function-specific devices, was quite intimidating for first-time users even as it was an insight as to where bank branch offices may be headed. On the other hand, ANZ was a “galley style” branch office with a mix of tellers and self-service devices on one side and cubes manned by ANZ staff down the other side.
One initial observation however had Margo and I discussing all of this and that was the need to be patient. Silly as it may sound, when it came to interacting with the self-service devices, it paid to read all the instructions and not to rely solely on the intuition. Watching other banking customers of our generation – yes, the baby-boomers – it was apparent that there was a high degree of discomfort when it came to interacting with machines, to the point where those at the ANZ branch were a completely different demographic to what we observed inside the BNZ. When I looked a little deeper into this phenomenon, it was borne out by observations of others – where one generation prefers to talk with banking staff, another generation simply wants to be left alone.
Our trip across the Tasman was on the latest addition to the Princess cruise fleet – the Majestic Princess. At 19 decks high with gross tonnage over 140,000 tons (and yes, gross tonnage is a nonlinear measure of a ship's overall internal volume and has nothing to do with weight) it had on board 3,500 passengers together with about 1,500 crew collectively sharing 11 bars and lounges. Two days into the sail to Auckland we passed a P&O vessel that had left Sydney much sooner than we had so with all of its size, the Majestic Princess is not only a smooth sailor, but fast! On the other hand, life on board such a leviathan gave me ample time to write as the WiFi network was pretty good even if the login / logout protocols were a tad complex – again, I had missed reading through all of the instructions to see many “free minutes” wasted. Ahhh! Next time …
While all at sea, news began trickling in following the
recent NonStop Technical
Boot Camp (TBC) event. In my previous post I wrote
about a number of topics as the event was under way. In one respect, not much
new was announced other than perhaps the departure shortly of longtime NonStop
stalwart, Randy Meyer. On the other hand, it is clear now that the NonStop team
is consolidating its position in the marketplace and by this I mean it is very
much focused on getting the NonStop community across to the L-Series operating
system. Whether it’s upgrading to the NonStop X systems or trialing the new
virtualized NonStop (vNS) either with the new NS2 package or by itself on
independently sourced hardware, the
focus of the NonStop team is on working through 2019 to ensure the NonStop base
is all smooth sailing with L-Series!
Part of this new vision has to do with ending future sales of the NonStop i family of servers. Another part has to do with broadening the availability of capacity on demand (or NonStop Dynamic Capacity, as the NonStop team prefers to call it) so that it wasn’t just for NS2 but for NonStop X as well; in this case, limited to just the bigger NS7 models. All this is to ensure baby steps can be taken when it comes to testing and then migrating to NonStop X. All sound decisions made by HPE and recognition of the risk-averse approach as demonstrated by the majority of NonStop users through the years.
However, there was another very important step taken by the NonStop team and that had to do with providing support for those users who may lack today all the skills needed to do a migration to L-Series. Services gained more attention this year at TBC than I can recall hearing at past events and for good reason – while the ATC was beneficial to many NonStop vendors with regards to validating the middleware and solutions it was never going to be in a position to scale up to handle all of the NonStop user community.
However, services come in two parts – offering your solution as a service as well as providing access to skilled service providers capable of helping NonStop users through any migration to L-Series. Among my current clients there are those NonStop vendors who have moved well down the path to providing solutions as a service. A lot more will be written about these early adopters in the coming months, but for now it’s important for the NonStop community to understand that the messages coming from the NonStop team aren’t hollow wishes about what might happen. And then there are the legitimate managed services providers operating in different regions as there is a firm plan by the NonStop team to partner with them as well.
Part of this new vision has to do with ending future sales of the NonStop i family of servers. Another part has to do with broadening the availability of capacity on demand (or NonStop Dynamic Capacity, as the NonStop team prefers to call it) so that it wasn’t just for NS2 but for NonStop X as well; in this case, limited to just the bigger NS7 models. All this is to ensure baby steps can be taken when it comes to testing and then migrating to NonStop X. All sound decisions made by HPE and recognition of the risk-averse approach as demonstrated by the majority of NonStop users through the years.
However, there was another very important step taken by the NonStop team and that had to do with providing support for those users who may lack today all the skills needed to do a migration to L-Series. Services gained more attention this year at TBC than I can recall hearing at past events and for good reason – while the ATC was beneficial to many NonStop vendors with regards to validating the middleware and solutions it was never going to be in a position to scale up to handle all of the NonStop user community.
However, services come in two parts – offering your solution as a service as well as providing access to skilled service providers capable of helping NonStop users through any migration to L-Series. Among my current clients there are those NonStop vendors who have moved well down the path to providing solutions as a service. A lot more will be written about these early adopters in the coming months, but for now it’s important for the NonStop community to understand that the messages coming from the NonStop team aren’t hollow wishes about what might happen. And then there are the legitimate managed services providers operating in different regions as there is a firm plan by the NonStop team to partner with them as well.
Much was said about the help at hand from the Pointnext
organization, formerly Technology Services. With a focus on Hybrid IT and the
Edge, there are a lot of skilled technicians on hand, but even so, not enough
to cover the NonStop community as a whole. Even with help from the current
NonStop Solutions, Technology and Business Analysts currently supporting the
NonStop sales organization, there is only so much that can be done. In case you
missed it at TBC it’s going to be the NonStop team partnering with a number of
managed service providers and from whichever way you look at this pursuit, it
is good news for everyone that is involved.
As was often said by actors in the BBC comedy, “Are You Being Served?” when it comes to these managed services vendors, then yes, “I am free (to serve)!” No suggestion here that such services will be free of charge, of course, and the reference here is simply directed at shop assistants who may be available. Point is, by partnering with a much larger community of managed services providers, the NonStop team too can ask a similar question – are you being served? Can we help? And, most importantly, we have you covered!
As was often said by actors in the BBC comedy, “Are You Being Served?” when it comes to these managed services vendors, then yes, “I am free (to serve)!” No suggestion here that such services will be free of charge, of course, and the reference here is simply directed at shop assistants who may be available. Point is, by partnering with a much larger community of managed services providers, the NonStop team too can ask a similar question – are you being served? Can we help? And, most importantly, we have you covered!
Suffice to say, ships have little to do with Moore’s Law and yet, they are part of the Intelligent Edge when you think about it and as such, the amount of data being generated across a single week is enormous. It is this escalation in data – particularly data needed by today’s mission critical systems – that bodes well for NonStop’s future. If one thing has come from all that was covered at this year’s TBC is that there is a future for NonStop that is clearly supported by product roadmaps stretching out for a very long time. You need blockchain / distributed ledger technology? You want NS SQL as a service? You want more temporary capacity? You want to mix traditional with virtual machines under the management of just one OS? With the spotlight turning towards the services sector shining brightly on many well-known NonStop partners, the strategy is clear – getting to L-Series is imperative and with that, future TBC events will all be focused on just how well you are being served.
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