As
familiar as we are with the NonStop systems fault tolerance and their ability
to run 24 x 7, are we too destined to work non-stop? Could the new normal break
down any separation remaining between weekends and the days in between?
I truly cannot count how many times I have read a story
about life in the new normal. Ignoring the fact that there’s absolutely nothing
normal about the way we work these days, what is perhaps even more galling is
the way assumptions are being made about our newfound daily routines. Who
really cares about my reduced commute times or who is shocked that I don’t stop
by for a Starbucks’ Caffè Latte No,
the more I think about normalcy and what I concur has become the new normal,
the more I am struck by the thought that well, perhaps we will never see our
formal normal times ever again.
This week I received an invitation to attend an IT
conference, ATMIA US Conference 2021, that will be held in Las Vegas, late
June. Surprisingly enough, this wasn’t about a return to a form of normalcy for
the HPE Discover event. As best as I can tell, this will once again be a
virtual experience in 2021. The invitation I received was complete with a list
of all those Platinum, Gold, Silver, etc. sponsors we have become familiar with
if not by name or even reputation then by the way they seem to fill in the
blanks.
The punchline in this invitation? “As effective
vaccines are increasingly deployed, the worst of the pandemic will soon be over
and the industry can start planning its recovery strategy and begin to enjoy
in-person networking once again in growing safety.” This was followed, a couple
of sentences later, with “We know you are ready for some in-person business
networking after a long pandemic with its associated social isolation.
You want to see an exhibit hall filled with new technologies, innovations and
new business opportunities.” Ouch; and to think here I am, at my desk,
behind my monitor, looking pretty glum about the prospects of seeing the
greater NonStop community any time soon.
Working out of a home office may have its upside in
that there is no commute and coffee is readily at hand – remind me, I have to
cut back on the caffeine, but not today, mind you. As for the downside,
searching journals, newspapers, tech web sites all the while looking for story
lines that could be developed is no substitute for hearing directly from those
more closely connected to the tech we all appreciate. NonStop systems! Yes, one
big downside the NonStop community can appreciate is that with no boundaries,
many of us have found ourselves working non-stop.
The photo above is of my office. It hasn’t really
changed all that much since the last time I included a similar photo. About all
I can add is that it’s a little tidier but that may be a moot point. Can you
make out the coffee mugs mementos of events past? There is a mug celebrating
the conclusion of the Exceed program as well as a mug from the launch of
Himalaya. Tucked in behind them and probably hard to see is the ITUG mug handed
out at the 1992 European ITUG event in Nice, France. It does feel strange to
have no human contact but then again, there were times on the campus of Tandem
Computers where I experienced much the same feelings.
If you didn’t have a multi-screen set up prior to
COVID-19, I am sure you now have such a set up. How many times a day do you
converse over TEAMS or ZOOM? Without commenting any further on that Texas
lawyer who became trapped behind a cat filter there have been times when I
wondered if my colleagues viewed my image as being presentable or not.
Depending upon the call, I set the camera up to display
something or another just as a way to keep them guessing as to where I am.
However, for the NonStop community they should recognize the painting hanging
in my office as captured in the photo above. It used to hang in the German
offices of Tandem Computers and was a gift from ITUG when I stepped down from
the Chairmanship of ITUG.
To round out the German connection, there is the framed
track map of Germany’s famous Nordschleife, or North Loop, of the Nürburgring! I
spent a day on track there as part of an open track day way back in 2010! But
there are also helmets and caps from different track events taking up space on
this shelving – all mementos too of a life apart from work.
A perfect offset to what occupies my daily routines of
late. When you think of normal then perhaps it’s a stretch after all to include
NonStop as part of any normalcy we care to consider. Isn’t NonStop far from
normal? Hasn’t NonStop solved business problems by doing something completely
different? But will NonStop change even more? Will we change along with
NonStop? The fundamentals of NonStop are such that try as they might, clusters and clouds, no vendor has managed to recreate NonStop!
I was asked this week if a client’s product was first
to market. What struck me by this question was just how many firsts the
original NonStop system achieved – there may have been early prototypes and
perhaps a model or two but from memory, NonStop as it first appeared as a
Tandem Computer, was the world’s first fault tolerant computer. Any other fault
tolerant implementation was purely a copy that simply followed the leader.
No IT executive questioned the fact that NonStop was
first and in so doing, acknowledged that NonStop had solved one of the most
troubling problems for IT. What to do when the system crashed? I don’t have to
go digging through libraries and check out Wikipedia to know that in the
mid-1970s, Tandem Computers brought the first fault tolerant system to market.
And it never crashed; cross off a major concern for those IT executives.
Working from home as most of us have been doing – if not all of us, I suspect – gives us time to understand where we came from. It might be trite to say that any understanding of where we have come from is a good indication of where we are likely to go. And I agree with that in every sense. The application of fault tolerance in support of applications led to it becoming the premier solution for mission critical applications – those applications a business relied on 24 x 7. What also struck me was how almost every application supporting human contact has become mission critical.
Off my office is a combination storage and library. If you want to know what almost four decades of Road and Track magazines looks like then you need to look no further. My reference material? Not so much, as these magazines are a reminder that what was once fashionable and what excited the motoring community long ago and have now been relegated (for the most part) to any one of those wrecking yards you pass on any interstate highway.
And this is what has struck me the most while sitting
in my home office; where is the competition to NonStop systems today? With all
the talk of clouds and indeed even commentaries over edge to cloud, complexity
continues to raise its less-than-pretty head whereby ensuring our systems will
never work perfectly and yet, there is NonStop continuing to process the most
critical of mission critical applications. Amazing! Transaction processing as
we know it isn’t about to change any time soon and that is a foundation we can
depend upon as all else around us changes.
Normalcy, as we like to think about it, is forever
changed. Living and working as we now have been doing for a year ensures we
have built new routines and developed new habits that will now be with us for a
very long time. Social distancing? Masks? New ways to replicate the shaking of
hands? Our social interactions as we knew them and about which we have derived
comfort through the years, replaced and quickly becoming ingrained in all we
pursue.
Isn’t it reassuring then that NonStop, that system
engineered to be anything but normal and that thrives in situations where
business simply have to continue uninterrupted, thrives today? Yes, truly
amazing! Perhaps it’s a harbinger of things to come; for all of us who cannot
refrain from working non-stop, maybe the career opportunities that lie ahead
will only grow bigger.
We may not know of what the future holds or what new
habits we develop even as we begin to realize that we may be running down this
path for many years to come. With a degree of assuredness and from checking the
product roadmaps, we can say that at its most fundamental level, NonStop isn’t
changing. However the same cannot be said about all of us. Who knows, just like
our NonStop systems, the challenge may be one of simply making the adjustment
and remaining as available as NonStop. On the other hand, after conversations
that took place this week, we could do with a brief stoppage; I need that extra
cup of coffee after all.
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