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NonStop; successfully separating usage from infrastructure deployment …

The chance viewing of posts and tweets led me to an analyst report that suggested hardware vendors were going to shift their business model. What could this mean for the HPE and the NonStop community?

Reading posts and commentaries on social media channels has become routine for Margo and me. For the better part of a decade, we have spent time checking out the popular sites like LinkedIn and Twitter. However, one post to LinkedIn we missed until we saw promotion of it elsewhere but after reading the post, it made us think more on where NonStop may be headed. The post was by T.C. Janes and it promoted a McKinsey & Company report, Hardware’s business-model shift: Finding a new path forward.

Janes was Client Chief Technologist where, according to his LinkedIn profile he was “Responsible for understanding and quantifying my client's technology portfolio, strategizing across all HPE Centers of Excellence to address their business/technology challenges, aligning current/future HPE solutions to my client's strategies, and advocating for their needs/interests within HPE.” So, as you would expect, when Janes promotes a paper, particularly one by McKinsey & Company, we should all take the ten minutes or so to check it out.

On the other hand if you, like me, put it off and still haven’t returned to the link, then perhaps my own views on this topic may be enough encouragement to do so. The catalyst for me to return to this promotional post by Janes was the couple of hours I spent in a no names town somewhere in the Deep South as Margo and I ventured back on the road to visit clients and colleagues in Florida. Television channel selection being limited, what better way to pass the time, right, than to catch up on our reading?


Central to the report was the idea that perhaps the future for hardware vendors – all hardware vendors – is to reimagine themselves as software purveyors. To take the relationships that they have created with some of the biggest enterprises on the planet together with decades of experience with providing the most basic of technologies, the computer, and to move on to what enterprises prize above all else. Solutions! Is it possible that the concept of “best of breed” is so, well so, twentieth century? Or is it yet another case of going deeper into a never-ending tunnel? As our business requirements have expanded, who wants to sign forty contracts to just get the basics covered?

It is time for these huge technology purveyors to pivot and focus on software and in so doing, completely overhaul their business model. The arrival of the cloud has proved to be instrumental to hardware vendors rethinking priorities. The arrival too of a desire by many enterprises to just pay for what they use, when they use it – again, something that experience gained from exposure to clouds – and it’s not just an issue of OpEx versus CapEx. The “Cloud Experience” is a reality as is the growing realization that with private clouds likely making further inroads into the data center, pressure on traditional hardware vendors to provide more of the infrastructure will only increase.

 


For some time now we have all been a witness to the significant transformation of NonStop. For four plus decades it’s been all about the hardware working in combination with the integrated software stack from the OS to the database to the transactional support. However, even as there are numerous papers discussing how the true cost of hardware is heading to zero, major hardware vendors, including HPE, have had to take seriously where future revenues will come from. Not for them will it be to simply walk away from the hardware business but rather to acknowledge that future development will need them to travel down two distinct paths.

The kicker here however is that while travelling down these two paths, momentum will have shifted to the software side whereby software will be leading the way. No more looking at the hardware as it is developed and seeking to optimize the software to best support whatever hardware the hardware team comes up with, but rather, the software team dictating what they need. The world of plug and play hardware has arrived and for those vendors traditionally considered as hardware-focused, it will take some time to unwind previously unchallenged positions. Feeds and speeds will be a thing of the past as new functionality appears rapidly and retaining a position of leadership will entail much larger funding for those cutting code. 

Above all else, according to McKinsey, it will be the push to bring the cloud experience to every corner of the data center and this will only be achieved through software -

 “IT-infrastructure providers face an unenviable challenge. Technological change has led their customers to view hardware appliances as commod­itized. At the same time, cloud-based vendors and hyperscalers have set new norms for simplifying customers’ experiences of purchasing IT infra­structure. As a result, savvy chief information officers (CIOs) and IT buyers now demand a cloud-like experience even when buying on-premises IT infra­structure, such as pay-per-use models for on-site equipment to help them manage the complexity of their hybrid deployments and IT needs.”

When it comes to reinventing their business model, McKinsey doesn’t hold its punches. And if you may still be wondering about NonStop then think of how in recent times, NonStop development has shifted its focus to support NonStop as software. With the arrival of virtualized NonStop, development proved that the umbilical cord that tethered NonStop to specific hardware could be broken. And this is where McKinsey agrees -

“In our experience, companies that successfully restructure their solutions to be software-led follow three steps.

“First, they disaggregate the hardware appliance down to its granular features and performance attributes (throughput, input/output operations per second, and latency, for example) and match them to their users’ performance needs.

“Second, they create a wholly new solution entirely of software, operable on any hardware appliance featuring an integrated control center to manage hardware-performance attributes and adjust underlying hardware or virtual resources as needed.

“Finally, they offer several value-added software features (performance monitoring and administration, advanced analytics on usage, and proactive maintenance of underlying hardware, for example). Only with these changes do customers view the software form-factor product as a viable stand-alone offer independent from the underlying hardware appliance.”

But what of HPE? What of its key strategic moves? From edge to cloud with everything available as a service, HPE has clearly shown a deep interest in ensuring that it is making all the right moves. This has to be put down to HPE maintaining a close relationship with its customers and following through with real programs. It is encouraging then to read McKinsey acknowledge this move of HPE as well -

“Even for traditional hardware products, IT-infrastructure providers are innovating on pricing models by offering hardware with turnkey on-site deployment, flexibility to scale on demand, and seamless periodic upgrades. Also, they can offer customers the option to pay on a per-use or consumption model. HPE Greenlake, for instance, is a leading example of such a cloud-like subscrip­tion model for hardware.”

There is a lot of work still to be done. For HPE and the NonStop team, there are “waves” of updates forecast that will ensure NonStop has a role to play within Greenlake. However, that is only part of the story as the bigger picture suggests that a re-envisioning of a future for HPE that is hardware-less may be a consideration. Hard to imagine, but then again, it was just as hard to imagine NonStop not needing its own hardware or that renewed focus on NonStop SQL would see a Cloud Edition (of NS SQL) become available.

Hardware costs might never reach zero. However, disaggregating the hardware appliance down to its granular features may indeed take place – HPE utilization of ProLiant servers being just the start – extending the reach of NonStop in doing so. We have always been asking where will NonStop run in the future? Will it even be around? The simply answer may be that yes, it will be around and yes, look for NonStop to run everywhere. From edge to core, you will find NonStop and isn’t that the answer we all saw coming?

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