Ready for the season to change? Ready for the nature of events to change? The weather may be turning chilly but there will be a warm reception for the NonStop All Digital Experience …
Among the posts have been queries as to which winter
tires to buy and what exactly does the state of Colorado mean as it declares
active traction laws are in place October through May. Turns out you have to
fit tires that are either snow tires, tires with the mud/snow (M+S)
designation, or use a four-wheel/all-wheel-drive vehicle. When I sought out
chains for our four-wheel drive Jeep Grand Cherokee, the tire company told me
that if the Jeep could only operate with chains mounted then “get off the road!”
Sometimes, it is the obvious that all that is needed to
pull you up to realize that well yes, that makes sense. For the NonStop community,
what has been obvious for many years is that there is no comparative server that
can assure us of a level of permanent availability that is a standard feature
of the NonStop server. As we continue to read posts to sites like LinkedIn that
inform us that there is no reason at all to buy one more server, the obvious
has clearly escaped the authors.
More times than not, there are reasons to run
applications on NonStop and those reasons haven’t changed. For interactions
with end users 24 x 7 nothing else can deliver the same degree of uptime than
NonStop continues to do, irrespective of the market vertical. More importantly
and yes, probably not always on the tip of our tongues, is just how NonStop has
been doing this for four plus decades. It may be cold outside but this just has
to warm our hearts knowing that HPE continues to make major investments in
NonStop.
I was reminded of this as Margo and I pulled together
the October 2020 issue of NonStop Insider. As the first issue of our fifth year
of publication, it attracted 20 submissions which is close to the maximum we
set for ourselves. This issue may already be available online as you read this
post, but it wasn’t just the number of submissions but how there were three of
them coming from HPE NonStop team members from different NonStop organizations.
While they are promotional after a fashion they draw our attention to their
videos, posts and industry observations some of which were published on popular
social media sites.
From the sales organization we see that HPE Enterprise
Account Executive Steve Kubick continues to post short video clips drawing our
attention to just how reliable NonStop systems are today and of how a
two-minute outage, acceptable to some IT managers, simply won’t fly for the
NonStop community. Master Technologist at HPE, Frans Jongma, is now posting videos
about NonStop SQL/MX (and continues to do so) highlighting, “how easy it is to
work with NonStop SQL/MX and how little advance knowledge is required to create
and use a fault tolerant database.”
Separately, Master Technologist at HPE, Justin Simonds,
looks at potential hybrid configurations based upon NonStop. “NonStop could
provide a continuous feed to the Apollo’s for continuous learning and model
creation. This became even more
interesting with the acquisition of Cray Super Computers,” writes Simonds. “They
have a number of government contract systems and a fabric that is faster than
InfiniBand … I’m calling this concept the Artificial Intelligence Driven
Enterprise or AIDE.” Reading these commentaries as delivered did warm our
hearts on this occasion.
Where NonStop Insider continues to break new ground is in terms of hearing
directly from HPE NonStop insiders, third-party vendors and a number of consultants.
One particular column that I wrote had a lot to do with a challenge to all
those in marketing. Are existing marketing practices still relevant and is the
traditional CMO becoming a legacy vocation – who would want to hold this title
in today. Talking about being warm, the corridors of marketing must be chilly
places to hang out these days. Perhaps, not coming from a place where marketers
like to go and yet, as with so much that has been influenced by the presence of
this global pandemic, what once was the mainstay of practices may no longer be
valuable going forward!
There was another thread that worked its way through
many of this month’s submission and that was the upcoming NonStop community
event, the Nonstop Technical Boot Camp. By now we have all read of how TBC has been
rebranded The NonStop All Digital Experience with free registrations
being accepted. If, as yet, you haven’t registered then simply go to this site,
NonStop TBC by clicking on the
hyperlink or by cutting and pasting this link into your browser www.nonstoptbc.com
There will not be anything chilly about this event even
as we all adjust to events being held virtually. This year I will be giving a
presentation based on the research note I wrote about the affordability of
NonStop. This is a revisit of the topic of the TCO of NonStop I first raised
back in 2012, but with the publication of a new report on Availability Level 4
server offerings by IDC the timing seemed appropriate. Once again, I will also
be presenting on behalf of NTI where its DRNet® product
line has taken off in ways many might find surprising.
If you want to be sure you make it to these
presentations, for now the dates and times are as follows:
Talk 1: “The ABCs of
NonStop TCO”
Sponsored by HPE
Scheduled for: US TRACK 2 – Wed – 11/18 @7:30am – Pacific Time
Talk 2: “From replication
to distribution, integration and transformation, NTI is putting data first”
Sponsored by NTI
Scheduled for: Vendor Theater: US TRACK 2 – Monday 11/16 @ 12:00 noon –
Pacific Time.
(Consider this as a guide only and check with Connect for possible future changes to dates or times.)
Is this proving warming? Is this taking your mind away
from the cold that is headed our way? As for Margo and me we cannot entirely
dismiss the thought of snow days ahead, but then again, those first snow falls
are always a welcome reinforcement of the way seasons come and go. And yes, we
are ready for cooler days ahead. While we will truly miss the opportunity to
drive to Burlingame, California, to meet you all in person, we are looking
forward to the virtual event. It should still be a whole lot of fun and the
numbers of registrations continue to climb suggesting that this could be the
biggest event ever, including those back in the days of the annual ITUG
Summits.
Any sense of urgency to
make sure we have the right tires on our SUV has lessened as we have no plans
to drive over the Sierras, although in all seriousness, we will have one eye on
the weather over the course of the next month or so. For those who know us both
very well you will know that taking away any opportunity to drive somewhere is
a downer for us. Then again, participating in a major event from my home office
has its upside but I will say more about that closer to the event taking place.
With that, I trust you are all preparing for the biggest event of the year for
the NonStop community. And understand this very well, our NonStop systems
remain the premier server offering supporting mission critical applications so
take time to read this month’s edition of NonStop Insider for a comprehensive
view of why availability still matters. And oh yes, stay warm!
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