Sometimes, timing is everything. At other times, you just cannot rule out luck. Over the past couple of weeks Margo and I have really run up the miles. We drove from the Florida panhandle back to Colorado and then on to Monterey. After which, we drove the reverse route. All up, I seem to recall, we did more than five thousand miles over the course of four weeks or thereabouts.
Regular readers will
understand that this isn’t a one-time road trip, as we normally drive to
wherever conferences and events might be held. One regular trip we have done
many times has been the Colorado to Mississauga, Ontario, loop just so we can
spend a day with the Canadian Tandem User Group. For many, sitting in a car for
this amount of time is inconceivable and yet, for Margo and me it’s the time
when we get to talk about what we can expect to hear at a conference followed
by a further discussion on what we did hear.
This time, however, external
events played a larger-than-life part – it was the height of Hurricane Season.
Having made the decision to build a new home in the Florida panhandle, suddenly
news about imminent hurricanes wasn’t academic. This was real! First it was
Debby, then Helene and finally Milton. With news of each one forming and
projected to hit Florida, it was hard for us not to keep checking our weather
app. The good news? All three missed us, veering southward and away from the
Emerald Coast.
Having written this, if any
of these hurricanes affected you in any way or created stress of any type, you
have our deepest sympathies and we wish you all the very best as you
contemplate recovery strategies. Know that our good fortune may be fleeting and
that in the coming years, a hurricane may descend on us with as devastating
results as we read about today.
Arriving back in Florida
meant a return to warmer weather and to outdoor dining, beachside. As an
Australian, there couldn’t be anything better and as quickly as the hurricanes
arrived, they departed. Call me a fair-weather friend but rain never bothered
me even as I had lived through tropical cyclones as the powered down the east
coast of Australia.
What came to mind was the
impact a very large cyclone had when it passed through, flattening businesses
and homes alike and where, for one resident left with only a battered old
couch, was photographed raging against the clouds, screaming, “is that all you’ve
got?” Ahhh – the Aussie spirit. Where this photo was taken was way up in the
Deep North and a zone that is reminiscent of what we regularly see here in the
Deep South.
Back here in Florida, the
mood never reached just jovial levels and yet, as the business of cleaning up
began in earnest, I suspect there were many harboring a similar sentiment. Call
it survival mentality.
It will take a while to see
any resemblance to what was once a picturesque vista but it will happen. In the
meantime, Margo and I are very fortunate to not only miss all the excitement
but to see our particular stretch of coastline totally unaffected by the recent
mayhem that was unleashed on the nearby population.
It was a reality check all
the same. And this is pretty much the
same sentiment we shared as we came back from the NonStop TBC 2024 Conference
in Monterey, California. In many ways, the conference proceeded just like any
other NonStop TBC Conference. The vendor sponsored beer bust the night before
the official kick-off followed the next day by company and product updates from
NonStop executives and senior management before the all-important roadmaps were
unveiled. It wasn’t a case of is that all you’ve got, but rather a reminder
that customer requirements are such that at times, it seems like revelations
about what’s new for NonStop appear at a glacial pace.
On the other hand, is that
necessarily a bad thing? One of the principal benefits of NonStop as a system
and a software stack is its dependability. It’s reliability. Change does happen
and products do evolve but in the important world of mission critical
transaction processing, these environments feast on a stability. Changing
anything material to the way NonStop supports fault tolerance and delivers
continuous availability and more rarely proves exciting to the NonStop
community. However, around the perimeter, modernization, security and support
for a plethora of current development tools represents significant steps being
taken in the right direction.
Company updates from the
NonStop team were supporting stability as new logos continue to be added to the
installed base of NonStop. It seems as though we have reached a balance point
where the occasional departure from the community is offset by the arrival of
someone new. Traditional markets may be consolidating even as other markets are
beginning to open up. Talking to the participating vendors present at the
conference, the only real desire they had was to see more solutions vendors
present but, in all seriousness, this isn’t the type of event where their
presence could be expected.
Personnel updates from the NonStop team also reflected that few organizational changes have occurred since last we met. Neil Davis of EMEA / LATAM was present and still as upbeat as always. Karen Ramirez of the Americas was approachable at all times of the day. And new boss of NonStop, Casey Taylor was kept busy briefing many of the attendees including a large international contingent that had made the trip to Monterey. As for the conference itself, the work that was put into making it successful was testament to the cooperation that existed between the NonStop team and the Connect organization.
It turned out to be a good
time to catch up with many of the NonStop team who work closely with NonStop
customers. For Margo and me, this is where the real world lies and it’s where
reality is revealed. Talking to folks like Keith Moore and Justin Simonds as
well as to Franz König along with Frans Jongma was worth the price of admission.
There lively discussions at days end, over adult beverages? Priceless. And at
this event, I had more conversations with Graham Rogers than I have had
preciously at half a dozen events. I have always liked these conversations, as
I always enjoyed them all, but when it comes to reality, this is what
networking is about and no opportunity to converse should ever be turned down.
Having said that, I need to call out Mark Pollans who was everywhere something was
happening and anywhere a customer needed guidance. I have watched Mark for many
years being an almost spiritual leader of these annual conferences and to hear
him, in his engaging style, uttering “ooohhhs and aaahhhs,” made absorbing the content very easy; we have all heard Mark do this previously and it was welcomed by all attendees. NonStop TBC 2024 is a
conference, after all, and a gathering of NonStop members au fait with all things
NonStop, so making sure there was a little levity on show helped set the tone
of the conference for the rest of the week.
As for the products and
specifically, the product roadmap, it was the hardware roadmap that held my
interest. Starship, anyone? Kind of has a certain billionaire rocket-man’s ring
about it, doesn’t it? When it comes to asking, is that all you’ve got then this
year, the updates just kept coming and coming. Listening to what are truly the
real customer needs has always been a forte of NonStop development and in this
case, what was floated as trial balloons early in the year appear to have
deflated quickly under the astute eyes of major NonStop customers. Such a dialogue
is good news for NonStop.
Starship will be a follow-on
to the current converged systems, NS4 X4 and NS8 X4. Having the latest ProLiant
Gen 11 servers with Intel Xeon x86 Sapphire Rapid’s microprocessors
underpinning the new systems means that converged systems will continue to maintain
a healthy presence in the marketplace. Virtualization, KVM, Hypervisors, et al
have their place and we will hear more about options in this regard the deeper
we get into 2025 but for now, life is good. Those applications we wrote for the
original NS II will continue to run, unchanged. Backward compatibility remains
intact and the investments made in the past are fully protected.
However, it is exciting as
now, looking out to 2025 and beyond, we can expect to see NonStop on public
clouds, and NonStop as a Service. When it comes to the GreenLake initiative,
closer participation with this initiatives’ foundation can be expected, given
flexible consumption arriving for NonStop users participating in GreenLake.
Converged systems, virtualized for private clouds and optionally, open to
deployment on public clouds is delivering on the biggest promise of all to the
NonStop community; choice!
Multiple options to run NonStop
whichever way best suits the needs of your business is something few NonStop
stalwarts ever expected to see. But the times have changed and the landscape
become more competitive. There is no longer a single guaranteed way to deploy
NonStop solutions. With an eye firmly set on prioritizing any reduction in the
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) NonStop customer IT organizations welcome any
opportunity to become more creative in the way the budget for transaction
growth and the NonStop team has heard them. And delivered!
Arriving back in Florida certainly
proved to be a welcome relief almost in defiance of what might have transpired.
Laid back as Margo and I now are, enjoying the sunshine along with some amazing
sunsets, the conversations started at NonStop TBC 2024 continue. We anticipate
a busy year in 2025 as next summer early adoption and pilots of Starship will begin.
And least I forget, with the
reference to Virtualization, VMs and Hypervisors, rest assured, Starship is
providing bare metal support for NonStop; a major reality check for all NonStop
watchers. Good news, all round, as there’s nothing to see here in this regard.
Same-o, same-o! Move along and on to what new applications you will introduce
on NonStop.
When it comes to is this “all
you’ve got” than the simple answer is no, it isn’t as this post doesn’t go
anywhere near covering every topic. However, in the coming months, further
updates are expected to be posted so for now, with the October issue of the NonStop
Insider published you will see many more updates from the recent conference
even as plans for the major events in Europe and America begin to take shape.
Safe to say, we will be back.
** All observations made here are my own and
have been included based on what I understood was presented at the time. For a more
comprehensive update, please make sure you reach out to your NonStop sales team
as some points, stated as fact, have been made in good faith but may diverge
from official statements ***
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