Walking into my office the only thought I had on my mind was how the year was coming to an end. I distinctly recall getting an early night New Year’s Eve 2020 and yet, here we are and 2021 is drawing to an end. It is also pretty easy to remark over how different 2021 had been to what was predicted two, three years ago. Remember the pundits writing about the coming doom that will overwhelm us and it had nothing to do with the global pandemic?
Leave it to the predictions of the French philosopher
Michel de Nostradamus (who some think has been “freakishly accurate”) when he
wrote of “World-ending asteroids, zombies and ruinous famine are on deck for
2021.” In response I can only repeat the most famous words of the American tennis
ace John McEnroe, “you cannot be serious?” Renowned for his on-court theatrical
outbursts, we all learnt to love the guy in time.
However, it is another image that perhaps sums up the year
better than others and it is of the British actor Peter Sellers when he starred
in the movie Dr. Strangelove that was even better known by its primary title,
How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb! It may in all honesty be too
soon to look back on 2021 and say with a straight face how well we accommodated
the global pandemic and for the most part, simply go on with it. Just today we
cancelled one more business trip as the circumstances dictated.
Yes, we can be serious at this time and yes, we are
making adjustments to better live with the presence of COVID-19 and all its
variations and mutations, but putting all that aside for the moment, what did
we truly learn this year? What impressed us the most? When it comes to the
NonStop community and the opportunities to network you may want to consider the
number of times we managed to find time for each other remarkable.
Come what may and as addicted to our home computers as
we have become, we still found time to “dial into” that webinar or event even
as we turned to our smartphones a lot. Did either Margo or I call you on a
business related topic this year? If we did then we can honestly say we sure
did appreciate you making time for us. It was also a time when the Connect
organization faced many difficulties and yet was still able to help out the
NonStop team even as they came to the assistance of many NonStop vendors.
There were three things that stood out as I look back
on 2021 that I will address here, in no particular order other than what
impacted me most at the time. They could be summarized as being integral in the
way the NonStop community interacted, the way the NonStop team advanced the
image of NonStop vendors and the breakout of perhaps the biggest
differentiating product available today only on NonStop systems.
The NonStop community interacted using many different
solutions. As the NonStop Technical Boot Camp 2021 (NonStopTBC21) transitioned
from in-person to virtual, we were all we better prepared to use Whova even as
we caught on to the underlying ZOOM participation. Enjoying a mix of live
presentations together with those recorded earlier gave us an opportunity to
revisit presentations after the event ended. Although I have to admit, I thought
that there would be many more replays than actually happened.
Find the time! There is great material out there. Of
course, being involved in events and webinars, some of us learnt some very
important lessons. If you actively switching between solutions involving video
transmission, make sure you restart your home computer as there are instances
where one solution will not readily give up ownership of the camera. Messing
about between Teams, Zoom, GoToMeetings, Skype and the like (and yes, I am
talking to you Skype), can be problematic and being presented with blank
screens and upside down video became more prevalent as the year progressed.
But we made it and we enjoyed those occasions when we
could interact. The unveiling of the Showcase was a major milestone for the
NonStop product managers. Being able to present your case to be added to the
NonStop price book certainly generated more than its fair share of activity as
many in the NonStop vendor community realized this was an answer to returning
to a level playing field. For some already entrenched NonStop vendors whose
products were already on the NonStop price book there were more than a number
of furtive glances around the community as they wondered whether their
competitors would make the cut!
However, for the most part, there is now a good mix of
products available from the NonStop sales team but that doesn’t imply that it
is an exclusive mix. Many NonStop vendors with their own sales and support
teams whose product offerings were already established in the marketplace have
elected to keep on doing what they have always done and this shouldn’t reflect
badly on any of them. Most important of all is that the options for NonStop
users continue to be out there so make sure your selection criteria takes into
consideration the many vendors who will remain staunchly independent.
Finally. The breakout product of the year! You would
have been hard pressed to miss the many articles and presentations that
featured NonStop SQL. We were all introduced to NonStop
SQL/MX Database Services (DBS). “By now, you all know that the intent of
NonStop SQL/MX DBS is to simplify the tasks for NonStop system administrators
on the one hand, and to allow easier use of SQL/MX to the end user,” was how
the NonStop Academy and the NonStop ATC positioned this development.
And if you missed my own article in the
October issue of NonStop Insider then you would have missed reading of the welcome
given to the world of NonStop SQL Cloud Edition:
Who could have imagined that we
would welcome the latest iteration of NonStop SQL as the NonStop team brings to
market NonStop SQL Cloud Edition? Yes, from data processing to data base to
data in the cloud, the answer may not be as simple as 42, nor is it to be found
coming from the android, Data, but rather, only a few keystrokes away as
NonStop continues to deliver on the database needs of corporations today. And still,
even as 2021 draws to a close, there will be many more CIOs who are still
trying to wrap their heads around NonStop SQL and the value it affords every
corporation.
This article also appeared in the September – October
2021 issue of The Connection under the heading, Data;
it lives and it grows – with NonStop SQL, data truly has found a home.
Living with
video conferencing while we see a new approach being taken by the NonStop team
to meet Customer needs for product integration via the price book together with
more news on NonStop SQL should have us worrying a lot less about the future of
NonStop. Indeed, as I have noted a couple of times over the course of the past
few months, there is an ongoing renaissance for NonStop clearly visible to the
NonStop community that needs to be better communicated to the broader IT
Industry.
And it cannot be
left to HPE alone to pursue. We need to be more actively engaged in extolling
the virtues of all things NonStop whether it is the edge, the core / cloud or
somewhere in the middle. Whether data created on NonStop needs to go out to
other NonStop systems, down to the edge or up to the core / cloud, when it
comes to the age of insight it’s downright hard to ignore all that NonStop can
contribute in a world aggressively pursuing analytics, AI/ML and more.
Will 2022 become
an era of NonStop? We will just have to wait and see but one thing I can say, I
sure hope I have an even better story line to write next year. And to quote
that infamous Australian Politician, Sir
Johannes Bjelke-Petersen KCMG, when it comes to what will take place in 2022
and the story I might tell then all I can now close with is, “Don’t you worry yourselves about that!”
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