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Another meeting and another airport; event season has started!

Why it is that so many times meetings involve airport hotels? As we get closer to spring and the event schedule begins in earnest, we find ourselves staring out a hotel window at scenery that rarely changes. There is always that perfect view, overlooking the air conditioning units even as the sameness about it all does little to encourage enthusiasm (for the day) or drive innovation (for the topic). And yet, as we look at our calendars there is a sense of excitement as we count down the days.

Whether it is a two days, weekend or weeklong event, they are predictable and follow well-established patterns. Check in for the flight, grab a cocktail, catch up on email and text, take the hotel shuttle on arrival, head to your room and unpack, wonder downstairs to the lobby bar and then hopefully catch up with colleagues. And so it begins; the routine you have embraced over the years is repeating!

Sitting in a hotel room adjacent to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), all of the above took place except it was one more time when it was Margo and me participating in this event dance. Rather than heading for the lobby we ventured up to the “runway bar” overlooking the airport. Quiet, almost relaxing, with just enough “small bites” to see us through to the end of the evening.

On this occasion, our participation meant that we would be celebrating my birthday away from home, once again, but yet doing what we have been doing for so many years; living life on the road! While the number of events has begun to grow following the global pandemic as our society has been anxiously awaiting the return to in-person meetings, I have found that time has collapsed to where road trips in the literal sense have diminished. Only twice in 2022 did we drive to a venue and this year isn’t looking any better.

The NonStop community is already witnessing the start of these event dances even if the significance of such events has taken on a new sense of urgency. Not being disrespectful when calling these gatherings event dances and yet, for many it is all about the importance of maintaining partnerships. Vendors look to reacquaint themselves with key users even as the NonStop team look for updates from both sides of the NonStop community.

Perhaps the most important aspect of in-person events just happens to be the journey. The road trips Margo and I enjoy so much oftentimes turn into the highlight of the week and when it comes to the NonStop community simply the reinforcement that investments in NonStop continue is likewise the highlight of any event week. Where else can the NonStop community gain important insight into NonStop product roadmaps than at community events?

In a column for the upcoming March – April 2023 issue of The Connection where I posted on the topic of NonStop modernization, I referenced recent posts by the HPE NonStop team. At one point, I wrote that the move by HPE to support its entire product portfolio on the basis of “as-a-Service (XaaS)” has many NonStop users taking a closer look at the optimal manner in which they acquire and deploy HPE NonStop. A path that, as of now, is via HPE GreenLake and already HPE NonStop with HPE GreenLake is becoming quite popular among NonStop customers looking to modernize the infrastructure and platform.

Yes, the journey is now taking a sharp turn outwards and for the first time, the options open to the NonStop community are broader than at any times in the past. Just as important for the NonStop community is how this is still very much the story of Tandem Computers albeit morphed significantly from the time of the introduction of Tandem. Guardian remains even as APIs expand and not just the OSS personality but across many of its key subsystems.

Want your application to be fault tolerant and you are a C/C++ shop? No worries, there are APIs you can leverage. For instance, The Fault Tolerant Interface (NSFTI) takes care of the NonStop specific API calls and bindings that will uplift any ordinary C / C++ application to become a Process-Pair considered by IT professionals the highest level of availability attained through software programming.

And where did I learn all of this? From attending sessions at recent events! Yes, the dance continues and Tandem lives on. The journey will be taking us into places we may not have previously considered visiting and yet, when we see what the scenery looks like, the possibilities become very attractive. And this is the most important observation of all – if we are not looking ahead as we take this journey then we will be left behind and with that, any future role for NonStop within our enterprise can be seriously eroded.           

When it comes to Pyalla Technologies, LLC., expect to see changes in 2023. Many years ago I was asked by the ITUG Board of Directors to consider taking my column, Real Time View, away from its presence in the community magazine, The Connection, to start a blog. This was the summer of 2007 and some 620 posts later (with more than half a million views), plans are afoot to return this post to where that column from two decades ago has started.

Pyalla, the company, was created in 2009 and the blog began providing highlights about the company. This included a constant update from event dances of the past. But today, with the vendor community Pyalla supports, the need to keep promoting Pyalla has likewise lessened. The opportunity to provide posts, articles and commentaries for clients has become a game changer; a change of direction in the journey that Pyalla has been on for fifteen plus years.

Consider this an opportunity to augment the blog Real Time View with the column in The Connection, also called the Real Time View. While the magazine column will become the focal point for commentaries on HPE and HPE NonStop, this doesn’t mean the end of this blog. Rather, the posts will be less frequent with more focus on the IT industry at large. As for our social blog, Buckle-Up, Margo and I will continue to post about our travels where you will continue to read about our attendance at events. The focus will be lesson the tech and more on the journey. No surprises here, naturally enough.

Margo and I have enjoyed the journey to date. The road continues to unfold with the horizon ever changing. In-person events are witness to a return to popularity and no matter where the flight might take you and despite the hotels we choose, it is a dance and for now, the event dance remains the highlight of any month when we jointly peruse out calendar. Will we see you at the next NonStop in-person event? We trust that we will and yes, look for my column in the next issue of The Connection.


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