Wherever
travel takes Margo and me, I often take photos at that location. A reminder of
where we have been and a way to start conversations with family and friends.
With today’s smartphones, it seems as though we are provided with endless
device memory so much so that we can keep on snapping photos indefinitely. When
it comes time to review the photos and to perform minor edits – I still cannot
seem to capture a straight horizon – some photos don’t make the cut and are
quickly deleted.
The longstanding problem of trying to keep a foreground in focus while wrestling with the impact from different lighting strengths more often than not leads to barely recognizable photos and are usually the first to be deleted. This was the case when visiting business colleagues and clients but one or two photos that fell into this category had me thinking to the point where I opted to keep the questionable images captured by the smartphone. Maybe software can improve the quality? On the other hand, they were enough to have me thinking about shadows in a way that struck me as being loaded with symbolism.
I referenced this briefly in a post to LinkedIn that I made at the time. If you missed it, you can still find it on LinkedIn. Just look for the heading, “Out from the shadows.” For many of us we are constantly reevaluating our contributions to the industry and in particular to the HPE NonStop community. In so doing we recognize that it is oftentimes left to us to carry the message of NonStop deep into our respective organizations. Whether it is a NonStop user, vendor or services provider, the story line is the same. We are left as the sole voice defending the use of NonStop in support of mission critical applications driving the business within the enterprise we serve.
If you have been present when I have been speaking on behalf of clients, you would have caught on to the number of references I made to defense and offense. I illustrated these references with imagery taken from sporting encounters. The old adage that a good offense is the best defense still holds but even when acknowledging this, how often is the NonStop community called upon to defend NonStop? The images that I initially questioned featured contrasts that left the subject in the shadows, projecting a poorly defined image of what should have been the highlight of the photo – do we see NonStop equally as poorly defined?
In my LinkedIn post I wrote that when it comes to technology, how often do we have critical infrastructure hiding in the shadows? We often write about what lies beneath using icebergs as one example but for IT, so much is out of sight that it is frequently overlooked. Whereas NonStop is more than just infrastructure much the same can be said about NonStop systems. For the NonStop user this is very much the case with many enterprises simply ignorant of the role that NonStop plays in supporting their customer experience. Fancy that: a system that never fails in turn disappearing into the background, hiding in the shadows.
Historically, I am an early riser. I like that time when there is only a faint light with dawn still an hour or more away. It is during this time that I often witness the shadows of night shortening giving way as they are bound to do to the strengthening light of the true dawn. It is a time too when I am most able to focus on my storytelling as the first phone calls of the day are yet to begin. Commitments to my colleagues and clients have a way of creating moments of redirection as the issues of the day begin proliferating.
When it comes to NonStop it is hard to ignore just how consistent NonStop has been over many decades. It does one thing and in so doing, excels at it in a way that very few competitors have emerged to where they have made commitments to the long haul. NonStop is unique in this manner with the design of its operating system legendary. Sitting in a motel room, whiteboards apparently lining the perimeter of the room, a small group of technologists engineered a modern marvel – a system that was truly fault tolerant from hardware to the operating system and supporting software stack.
The complete NonStop “Package” didn’t all come together on the same day but enough was implemented to change the world and led to NonStop achieving a greatness few other systems ever matched. The very pinnacle of how technology could be turned on itself, so as to speak, and be used to ensure a NonStop system never failed to complete any given assignment. NonStop has outlived almost all computer architectures – only the IBM mainframe has existed longer than NonStop. Other systems that persist for a while rarely gained the level of recognition afforded NonStop. As we so often observe, some of us have lived in the shadow of technologies that appeared and then, just as quickly, ever so quietly left the scene even as their adherents held an almost religious reverence for them way, way past their use-by date.
The NonStop community should be proud of its achievements like running one of the busiest container terminals in Asia, providing the oversight of luxury cars manufacured by Mercedes Benz, providing underpinning all of financial institutions’ operations across a region that include multiple nations to where oil and gas companies support their customers through NonStop. Competitors to HPE have gone so far as to deploy virtual NonStop in support of their clients and we could continue going down the list of use cases that continue to amaze us each time we hear of something new.
Doing one thing, doing it well and then ultimately, owning the niche is something all creative folks will tell you is the holy grail for all product companies. Shadows may be hiding the details obscuring the observer’s view from what is happening due to the presence of NonStop but from the many events that were held this year, one observation I couldn’t shake was just how enthusiastic the NonStop community is about all things NonStop. The energy that surrounded the launch of NonStop couldn’t have been much better than what I have witnessed this past year.
Youthful exuberance is on the rise! Did you count the presence of folks that are second generation NonStop advocates? Nothing encourages enthusiasm like thatgenerated around the dinner table and clearly the NonStop community is benefitting from the growing presence of younger adherents to NonStop. And with what I am seeing coming out of the NonStop development teams, more excitement awaits as the true power of NonStop as Software (and yes, NonStop as a Service) becomes better known.
Standing in the shadows is no longer an option. As children we were wired to somehow fear what was lying in the shadows. But for the NonStop community that was very much present in the shadows for quite a while, those early morning rays are now hitting us and our presence is coming into clearer focus. The storytellers among us have picked up the gauntlet and are unashamedly promoting the benefits of NonStop and for good reason. What doesn’t fail us make us truly stronger and as for that morning light? Well, it’s beaming on us now and our presence is on full display in ways unexpected only a decade ago.
Don’t apologize for our history just as we need to offer no excuses about the longevity of NonStop. Rather, let the industry witness as we are doing now, the shadows whose lengths are shortening as we watch. Yes, we do have something to say and for once, by all accounts, through numerous technology refreshes taking place, we are being heard with our value proposition no longer avoidable. So smile as yes, we are stepping out of the shadows and we are liking what we see!
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