With 2023 firmly in the
books, it proved to be a statement year for Margo and me. That’s right, we
didn’t buy a new car all year. This may come as a surprise for many of our regular
readers but our ongoing support of our clients was such that we simply didn’t
have the time to take in any of the car shows or to walk showrooms floors.
Perhaps even more shocking,
we were given the opportunity to take delivery of an upgraded C8 Corvette – the
new Z06 model – but we turned it down delaying such purchase for at least one
more year. You might say, we resisted all temptations to jump on opportunities
to drive away in shiny new cars.
A blogger I follow on
LinkedIn provided insights into what distracts start-ups during their first
months of operation. To save you scrolling back through constantly changing
LinkedIn feeds, her observations were right on the money. What she wanted to
convey was that after working with a company to the point of a product launch happening
with considerable fanfare, subsequent fortnightly meetings didn’t go according
to plan.
Following the excitement of
the launch, two weeks later the company caught on to an idea and wanted to
change the messaging front-end. Then a further two weeks, they thought they
should re-tool their backend. A further two weeks later and they wanted to redo
the product to highlight cloud support.
At least this is how I
followed the story line. The response from this blogger who was providing
advice and counselling was to stay focused, ignore the “shiny news headlines”
and stop thinking about changes for change’s sake. Rather, came the advice,
given how good the product is in its current form, don’t be seduced into
believing everything being promoted is necessarily a good thing.
You had spent time
researching, designing, building and then took to market a very sellable product.
A solution for many companies, meeting their current requirements. Oh, the lure
of shiny things … and as Margo and I have plans for celebrating a major
milestone, be assured that there will not be additional jewelry, watches or
even diamonds in the works … are you crazy? As for flowers well, they too were
absent much to the apparent chagrin of Margo; who knew?
Alice Merton, a
British-based German-Irish-Canadian singer-songwriter (all the bases covered
with this acknowledgment) penned these lyrics:
You
don't make any sense to me (how)
'Cause
you choose to focus on shiny things (how)
It’s early 2024 and already
it’s becoming very clear that there will be a record number of HPE NonStop
community events and conference. This doesn’t include HPE Discover 2024 coming in
the summer but then events across four, possibly five, continents confirms that
interest in all things NonStop is not diminishing. To the contrary, there is a
sense that interest in some markets is steadily growing and it makes me wonder
about a time when HPE really gets it and steps up to throw real marketing
dollars in support of NonStop.
When it comes to former
markets, the presence in almost every stock exchange was quickly overturned
when incoming CEOs (was Ameritrade the true catalyst for this?) were seduced by
shiny Windows boxes. So were NASDAQ and others. In chasing the apparent
attractiveness of these shiny new boxes, they overlooked the value of
reliability and resilience.
Yes, program trading proved
to be a bear on compute power but the transactions? Yes, they were mission
critical and it now seems to have become an annual event to report of outages
and yes, glitches, that made trading next to impossible at these very same
exchanges.
There are other industries I
can think of that were attracted to what looked at first glance to be the
latest shiny thing that would prove to be the salvation. Yes, white knights
riding into battle always took on the appearance of radiant light as the sun
bounced off their armor but ultimately, what glistened so brightly reduced
their flexibility and less-equipped individuals on foot simply surrounded them
and eventually nullified whatever advantage they thought that they might have.
Battles are rarely won by
the latest gadget and this is something we are witnessing first hand in the
skirmishes across many battlefields that make their way almost nightly onto our
television screens.
NonStop as the premier
mission critical transaction processor continues to hold sway among financial
institutions even as it continues to grow a presence in manufacturing,
distributions and transportation. In a global economy where the movement of
goods is all-important, it’s encouraging to know that there are container
terminals, manufacturers and even warehouses where you will find NonStop.
These shiny new cars from
the biggest luxury car manufacturer are all created as with the help of
NonStop. Just check in with Mercedes Benz sometime to get the full skinny on its
commitment to NonStop and while you do that, give a big thank you to abat+ for
making it all possible.
However, two things are
taking place across the NonStop community that don’t truly fall into the
category of being shiny and yet, the net result makes the presence of NonStop
look shiny. Modernization together with a renewed focus on resilience have captured
the imagination of many IT professionals.
Much has been written of
late about just how modern NonStop has become and where the need for special
skills (to develop, deploy and operate solutions on NonStop) has lessened
considerably following enormous efforts by NonStop development teams to ensure
transparency.
Use the tools you are
familiar with! Program in languages you were taught in college! Oversee using
any number of open and industry-standard monitoring tools! And yes, pull up a
cloud-based development environment, with cross-compilers on hand, that make
new development of applications destined for deployment on NonStop so much
easier – have you been listening to the NonStop product managers describing how
easy it really has become to leverage the core attributes of NonStop. Transparently!
As for resilience, it’s as
if all the NonStop vendors are engaged in providing systems backup as well as
ensuring business continuity and talk about the message of resilience. As has
been the conversation for much of 2023 then whether it’s business or digital
resilience or even cyber resilience, the NonStop community has a wealth of
options from which to choose. They may not be shiny and completely new yet they
bring to the table some of the best tools to advance an enterprises’ readiness
to repel the attacks of bad actors everywhere.
This doesn’t mean that in
repelling bad actors we are going back to deploying our knights in shining
armor, but rather, turning our eyes towards what we have always known to be
fundamentally sound product offerings. These product offerings are proving to
be sound in their current form and are enjoying popularity simply because they are
a good thing.
Shiny headlines continue to
appear and there are times when they appear at gatherings of the NonStop
community but fortunately, wiser heads more often than not prevail. Ultimately,
it is the reputation and experience of the NonStop vendors that carry the day. I
cannot say that at some point in 2024 there will not be a new car purchase even
as I have to admit that something shiny might appear that seduces Margo and me
to pull out our wallets.
When it comes to NonStop in
2024, with as many tech refreshes as I am anticipating as the migration to the
latest NonStop systems will continue as well as the growing acceptance of
NonStop becoming virtual, there are going to be those NonStop customers that
begin looking at their mix of applications, infrastructure, tools and
utilities. With such a renewed interest in optimizing the operation and
performance of the NonStop systems, many of these NonStop customers will turn
to vendors with better mixes of functionality, support and pricing.
And somehow that line in the
song, “You don't make any sense to me” continues to intrude my memory.
Perhaps it makes more sense to lift our eyes above the latest shiny object to
see what really is important. For the NonStop community, the reality maybe
setting in with the knowledge that, for what NonStop continues to provide, it’s
not so much about being shiny as it is to shine.
With close on four decades
of market presence, shining above all else is what NonStop brings to the party
and nothing we see today diminishes that shine. Making sense? Being crazy?
Wasn’t there another line written about diamonds, and craziness and simply
shining on?
Let’s encourage one another to keep NonStop in the conversation throughout the year as even now, there is a sense that sentiment is turning and once again, NonStop will have quite a bit to say in the outcomes of any enterprise future plans. Once again, let me reiterate Margo’s and my plans for 2024 and the many NonStop events and conferences we will be attending even as we brace ourselves for a hectic travel schedule.
If you see us at any of these events and you would like to chat, then pull us aside as with a
certainty, it is our objective to make every NonStop customer shine as they
should.
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