So
much has been written about how difficult it is to predict the future. The
topic is simply self-explanatory – the future is unpredictable and for many,
attempting such a feat is tantamount to a total waste of time and effort. And
yet, for as many years as I have been posting to this blog, going all the way
back to 2008 and the post My Wish for NS Blades, simply contemplating what
might be has me turning to my magical lamp to check in with the genie. Perhaps
not, but every three years which in IT years I view as being close to an
eternity, I “have at it” and put pen to paper. Well, my fingers to a keyboard
at least.
If
you look back through the labels created for this blog and check the regularity
of the posts about my three wishes for NonStop, separation of three years seems
reasonable. Having said that, when contemplating the future for NonStop today you
will see that four years have elapsed between this post and the previous post.
I put this down to the COVID year as opportunities to network with the NonStop
community at regional events and conferences were limited. And no, I didn’t
foresee an event as tragic as COVID or that it would disrupt the global economy
the way it did.
Switching
off Zoom and heading to a conference Room, a blessed reality beginning in 2023,
saw a renewal of our confidence to network once again. However, if one
observation can be made early in this post, it is that the NonStop community
has returned to RUG meetings in numbers not seen for roughly half a decade. What
were my first three wishes for NonStop back when I posted in 2008?
“My first wish is to see HP BCS deliver
on … “Shared Infrastructure Blade.” This is where any mix of NonStop, HP-UX,
Linux, and Windows Server OS’s will be supported.
“My second wish is to see a hypervisor
introduced where NonStop can be configured as a ‘guest OS’ in much the same way
z/VM is used on the IBM mainframe.
“My last … wouldn’t it be advantageous
to users if interrogation of incoming transactions would direct mission
critical transactions to NonStop, important informational but not quite
mission-critical to a Unix or Linux, and voluminous inquiries to Windows?”
In 2008 the big story was the introduction of blades as the basic building blocks for all NonStop hardware. The prospect of a shared infrastructure blade was introduced by then HPE CTO Martin Fink and at the time, it sounded like a good idea. The very same blade package would be capable of running any HPE supported OS including NonStop and well, before there was any real prospect of running NonStop virtually or the presence of smart transaction-based routing, the wish for an open NonStop supporting industry-standard hardware seemed a distant prospect.
And
yet, here we are today with many of these pieces already in play. In IT years,
2008 was so long ago that it may as well have come from Frontier Land when we
are all looking to hear the latest from Tomorrow Land (to borrow from
Disneyland). However, much of what has transpired for NonStop in the
intervening years has been a steady sequential movement that has projected
NonStop into the real world, where its underlying value proposition is still
highly regarded. Need I add that we will shortly be celebrating the golden
anniversary of NonStop. Fifty years, and counting? Who knew!
Alternatively,
it may be said that little more needs to be wished for when it comes to
NonStop. Instead, there could easily be a consensus among the NonStop community
members to let things as they are today simply play out. One aspect of NonStop
and the marketing of NonStop is that it is a market that is cautious when it
comes to change. So many transactions passing through NonStop are of a
financial nature and messing with the money has been a longstanding no-no for
technology companies. So, yes, before we wish for anything further, lets get on
top of virtualization and see if the offerings of cloud services providers can
be leveraged in a manner that is positive for NonStop.
There.
I have said it. Virtualization. Clouds. And there is still one more element we
know is having an outside influence on our decision making: Hybrid IT. The idea
that there would be enterprises running just a NonStop systems is likely to be
a rarity of such miniscule proportions as not to be relevant. For most NonStop
users, they can simply point to their latest NonStop system and note that it’s
already a mix of NonStop, Linux and Windows. But Hybrid IT is more than what we
point to with NonStop as the presence of NonStop within an enterprise IT
deployment. It is connected to multiple systems and external resources to where
it can only be described as being on of the cogs in a monster IT machine.
With
that covered – Virtualization, Clouds and Hybrid IT – what are my three wishes
for the next three years?
Let’s
start with something that touches all of us. The NonStop vendor community. My first wish is to clear the air and point
out that the plan to not put all NonStop vendors’ offerings on the plan was a
failure and that what is on the price book today is only a small representation
of the choices available to the NonStop customer. Can this be changed and the
situation rectified? It’s unlikely as the NonStop team would be hard pressed to
admit that they got something, as important as software, completely wrong.
As
much as I could wish that this all went away the reality is that it isn’t
likely to happen. Too many entrenched vested interests. However, what I really
wish for now is that a number of NonStop vendors merge or at least form a
globally functioning co-op such that they have the depth of experience and the
fortitude to make it happen. What the NonStop team had been trying to achieve
is to show to NonStop prospects a richness of software offerings reflecting a
commitment to the NonStop system that would be hard to ignore. Going forward
what I wish for is to have a number of large consortiums that could go
head-to-head on a level playing field where it is the customer that dictates
strategic directions and selects an appropriate roadmap that best serves their
interests.
A
big wish, I know and perhaps a little too far-fetched. But so too was
virtualization and the arrival of clouds back in 2008. If we are to see
sustained investment in NonStop by NonStop vendors then size will ultimately
matter and for now, it distresses me to say that the prospect of many NonStop
vendors leaving the field is getting too big to ignore. A poor next wish for
the coming three years? I don’t think so … then again, this is not necessarily
wishful thinking as the software industry is liberally littered with
partnerships, relationships, relationships of all type that eventually
boomerang back to where it all started. Could we see this taking place at some
point? That is, a return to a true level playing field that encourages continued investment in NonStop by all parties?
What
is next on my wish list has a lot to do with education and training. We are
witnessing a generational change within the NonStop community visible at both
the vendor and customer level. A younger generation has arrived with fresh eyes
and what they see might legitimately be viewed as legacy. Hard to ignore when
NonStop has been around for so long and where many of the production systems
have been written in programming languages no longer considered as being
modern. And yet, what the NonStop team has done over the past couple of years
to ensure all developers can leverage their programming skills in support of
new applications for NonStop is quite revolutionary.
Making
the presence of NonStop as transparent as they have managed to do is quite
amazing and there are now a number of articles, posts and white papers covering
this topic. Who knew we could call up a NonStop development environment from a
number of cloud services providers, develop and test code, leverage
cross-compilers and then load to NonStop for execution. The idea of funding a
separate NonStop system for development does now seem a little antiquated but
the message needs to be amped up considerably to gain the attention it needs.
Nike may say, Just Do It, but it is time the NonStop community promotes the
message of yes, we Just Did It!
In
short, my second wish here is for the IT community at large to become motivated
to develop for NonStop such that numerous new solutions become available that
capitalize on the strengths of NonStop. There is still tremendous merit in
deploying a platform that simply doesn’t’ fail and that can scale to meet any
imagined Black Friday environment. The world of NonStop needs more solutions
and as of right now, the NonStop team has delivered the tools to bring such
solutions to market in a supportable and timely manner.
Finally,
for my third wish I want to call out the upcoming golden anniversary of NonStop
and use it as a catalyst for a major marketing push by HPE in support of
NonStop. Apart from the IBM Mainframe, no other system and software stack has
provided sustained value for longer than NonStop. The implication clearly is
that the designers of NonStop those fifty years back simply got it right. If
you can’t fix stupid, as Forrest Gump reminded us, then it is true that you
cannot break brilliance. What lies beneath the APIs supported by NonStop is a
degree of cleverness bordering on brilliant and it would be my wish that this
was recognized by HPE.
Not
just with a sidebar annotation to some routine press release but for HPE to
take a bow. In public, perhaps at HPE Discover 2024. Surely, celebrating fifty
years and being the longest serving platform in the HPE product portfolio is
worthy of celebrating at this upcoming major event for HPE.
There
are many more simple things that could be done as well – when HPE addresses the
financial community at the end of each quarter, they provide updates on the
different groups within the HPE organization. But with all the analyst briefings
I have followed for the past five years or so, there’s been no mention of
NonStop. Major enterprises can read these reports and in so doing are left with
little option than thinking of NonStop as Mr. Irrelevant. Not a solution to
invest in or rely upon for supporting a major application including
applications considered mission critical. That is just one opportunity that is
missed and could be easily rectified by HPE.
HPE
does very little to support NonStop influencers and with the generational shift
under way across the NonStop community and indeed the enterprise IT community
as a whole, very little energy is spent on fostering a thriving influencer
community and this is something too that could be easily rectified. Education,
training, communicating, promotion and a vocal multi-layered approach to
influencing constitute my third wish and for NonStop to celebrate more than its
fiftieth year such a refresh would go a long way to ensure we are soon to be
celebrating sixty, seventy-five years, and perhaps longer.
As
I conclude this post on my three wishes for NonStop and I look back at what I
posted first in 2008, it doesn’t escape me that the NonStop community is still
thriving some fifteen years later. When so many other solutions have faded from
memory, NonStop still lives and remains productive in all that it supports. And
for all those nay-sayers who want to believe that HPE ruined NonStop and that
NonStop isn’t the system it once was rest assured it’s not anything like what
existed in the previous decades. It’s something else entirely different and in
being different now, it is far superior to what existed in the past.
And for that I am wishing the very best for the future of NonStop!
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