By HPE’s account, we at NonStop, create data!

There is one certainty coming out of NonStop Regional User Group (RUG) meetings, you will hear something new about NonStop and ATUG, Atlanta didn’t disappoint …

It has been another extended period on the road. A drive to California for a major HPE NonStop event – the NonStop Partner Symposium followed up by several days in Atlanta for the ATUG Regional User Group (RUG) meeting. Enough travel to say it’s time to call it quits and head for home meaning we will miss the annual big event outside Toronto, Canada – the CTUG RUG meeting. It’s always a busy time of year as fall arrives but even so, it always seems to prove to be a worthwhile program to pursue as information about NonStop continues to arrive and it’s taking a lot of effort to understand it all. Let alone respond.

And this past week too followed the production of the September issue of NonStop Insider – have you read it yet? If not, you may want to check it out as it was another 20 submission issue: NonStop Insider Issue 3.12 This was a special issue as it celebrated three years of issues and next month, we will begin year  four. A lot of work has been done to ensure the success of this publication and it wouldn’t be possible without the support of our good friends at TCM, Scotland. At this point it’s worth noting too that the upcoming Sep – Oct, 2019 issue of The Connection will feature multiple articles, commentaries and opinions by your team at Pyalla Technologies, LLC so look for the promotion of this issue as it is only a matter of days from being published online.

One thing has always intrigued me with RUG events – the numbers of NonStop users attending each event may be in the low double digits but with as many as there are held each year, it soon adds up to a sizable number. And this doesn’t include the major regional events held each year including the NonStop Technical Boot Camp that will be held in a couple of weeks’ time or even the past European TBC held a few months ago in Edinburgh, Scotland. There was a time when just one customer showed up for a RUG event then five or six and now oftentimes, a dozen or so. My experience is that each RUG event represents an opportunity to tell a lot more of the NonStop story at a time when there is a lot more to tell. In case you missed it perhaps the biggest story is that NonStop X is being deployed at a faster rate than the upgrade to Itanium which in turn saw upgrades to NonStop I taking place fast than the upgrades to the S-Series.

This was according to HPE VP, Mission Critical Systems, Jeff Kyle who was present for ATUG and provided invaluable insight into not only the NonStop product but the NonStop business as well. Jeff, pictured above gave one of the better presentations I have seen him give and it was encouraging to see an HPE executive of his statute take the time to fill us all in on the progress HPE is making with NonStop. And yes, one again, it was Jeff who reiterated that NonStop wasn’t offloaded to Micro Focus as just one more non-core products but rather, was kept and showcased in numerous ways as being core to HPE’s future. Showcased? It’s hard to ignore the investment of the past five or so years HPE has made in NonStop even as it’s hard to ignore the substantial investment HPE’s own IT has been making in NonStop – you want another option rather than Oracle and you are finding Oracle RAC both expensive in not scalable? Well with NonStop you have a worthwhile and viable alternative – just ask HPE IT!

However, it was just two statements by Jeff that really caught my attention and drove a number of conversations among the NonStop community that was present. What triggered my attention began when Jeff reminded us all of statements made by HPE CEO Antonio Neri at this year’s HPE Discover 2019, Las Vegas. “BY 2022, everything as a service,” was by now a well-known declaration but Jeff added to this by saying that a few years later, we will see “everything in memory!” I have written about this in briefing papers to my clients but it’s worth dwelling on for just a minute or two. Has development of storage progressed to the point where there is little difference between cache, main memory and storage? Are we seeing the possibility of flash storage available in vast quantities and yes, even optic memory having an impact to where we can consider memory as being universally unlimited? Does this make as think again about analytics and the intersection between analytics and transaction processing?

Consider this one way to segue into the first statement that intrigued us all. According to Jeff, “We, at NonStop, create data!” Simple enough to say but how often do we overlook this important consideration? After all, with all the talk about analytics and the value of data – yes, for business today, data is the new currency – data has to originate somewhere and with NonStop occupying the front lines with respect to end user engagement, of course NonStop is where data is created. So, having said that, data has to be moved! But how far? In an increasingly virtualized world, perhaps that movement now is just a matter of nanometers as the analytics is performed in an adjacent virtual machines possibly even running on the same x86 server as NonStop. Yes, the world of analytics and transaction processing – the world where OLTP meets OLAP and more – is colliding and perhaps a lot faster than we may have imagined.

As for the second statement coming from Jeff, having just about the same level of impact on the attendees was when he said that “technology will be embedded, everywhere.” Not merely a cliché or yet one more example of perhaps AI but rather, when you consider the cost of CPUs as predicted by VC firm, Andreessen Horowitz,  going to zero then expect to find CPUs in everything. Or at least this is the current thought of industry watchers and if you would like to read more on this, check out this latest issue of NonStop Insider and read the CTO Advisor newsletter by Keith Townsend.

As if to confirm what Jeff stated, Townsend adds that he expects “I to see more of this model where services companies give away the hardware because of the non-existent cost of CPU. It also means that Intel and AMD will push into adjacent areas where they now partner. Intel’s push into AI, Networking, and Storage are examples of this trend.” For the NonStop community the implication is pretty straight forward – expect to see NonStop embedded right along with the CPUs. While it hasn’t been confirmed as a product as yet, just the sight of NonStop running on HPE’s own Edgeline systems designed for deployment at the edge and a likely candidate for embedding, reinforces the premise that technology will be embedded, everywhere!

So there you have it. You would have only heard about this and been a participant in the discussions that followed over coffee if you were actually present for the RUG event. Simple enough – it you missed the event, you missed the discussions. And of late with as much that is happening with NonStop as is being reported, do you really believe in the status quo? Do you really think you know everything about NonStop? More importantly, if you want to be in a position to help your enterprise, you need to know the full story and be able to paint a picture of NonStop that is both relevant for your enterprise as it is an opportunity to expand its responsibilities. NonStop has one key attribute that diminishes little in the current world of IT – availability. This is something we can never leave out of the conversation.

Over the next couple of months, Margo and I will be heading out on the road again this time travelling from the east coast to the west coast. From Washington D.C. to San Francisco. And we will be gathering further insights on how enterprises are embracing NonStop but to hear more about this, you will not only need to follow these blog posts but you will have to be present at TBC. Will we see you there? Sure hope you make it and remember, it really is very true, it’s on NonStop where data is created!