One of
my most treasured photos – Jimmy and me,
at a not that long ago N2TUG gathering.
Following
my first attempts at blogging, back in August of 2007 – yes, some 18 years ago
– around the time of the European ITUG Summit in Brighton, UK, it was a good
friend of mine and former ITUG board member, Sam, who came up to me and said,
“Slow down with the posts; you write faster than I can read!”
Not
a put-down or in any way condemnation of those early posts but rather, a
recognition that time is important for all my readers and dropping a post on a
daily basis, albeit a lot shorter than what I post today, was perhaps not an
ideal way in interacting with the Nonstop community. Give them time to read,
think and perhaps comment otherwise readership will dwindle. How right he was,
it turns out. Today, with post number 651, readership is as strong as it ever was
and for that, I have to thank Sam.
What
started in 2008 with the first “Three Wishes for NonStop” can be viewed by
scanning the Labels listed in this blog’s sidebar until you come across “Wishes.”
Looking through the list, with posts every three years (apparently the last
one, planned for 2023 wasn't finally published until 2024) there has been one
consistent theme much-embellished along the way. Ignoring that timing lapse,
the next Wishes post will take place, on or around February 13, 2026. A
continuation of the practice begun in 2008.
To
begin with and returning to the earlier observation, there has been
considerable emphasis placed on virtualization, clouds and hybrid IT. These
have fed earlier wishes including those of 2020 where the wishes covered the
possibility of Nonstop running on the then-current platforms of ProLiant,
Synergy and Apollo, greater integration with GreenLake and yes, the support of
Nonstop deployed within private clouds.
Moving
close to the present, in 2023, the wishes developed further into product and
services delivery whereby Nonstop vendors grouped themselves into larger
consortiums to better compete with the newly released Nonstop price book
inclusion of just a few pampered vendors proudly promoting their privileged
position. Perhaps more importantly was the advocating for a transparent
development environment where all software developers could promote their
solutions as being Nonstop capable. Through the further work done to ensure all
popular tools and frameworks supported execution on Nonstop that is making this
the new reality for Nonstop developers. Finally, with the golden anniversary of
Nonstop coming up, how about wishing for greater marketing priority within HPE
so that IT in general could see support of Nonstop by HPE executives and
managers.
As
I look back at these wishes, then there is much that is positive that can be
reported. Deals are being done for GreenLake that include Nonstop but even so,
still a fare cry from being truly a part of GreenLake’s much-ballyhooed
“as-a-Service.” At one point, Nonstop did successfully run on Synergy (as I
recall) but the final price-point didn’t make much sense. As for Apollo? Well,
less said the better on that wish. Development for Nonstop using
industry-standard, open-source, development tools seem to have progressed
nicely with more good news to come. And yes, Kernel Level Threading (KLT) is
the stuff of headlines!
Returning
then to the big three - virtualization, clouds and hybrid IT – not a whole lot
has changed here as these three topics remain highly visible on any HPE radar. So
much so, making further predictions preparatory to the upcoming Wishes post in
2026 seem somewhat mundane. So, what am I considering as possibly being
earth-shattering news? Will Nonstop run on AMD chips? Will ProLiant come
equipped with GPUs that developers can readily access for CPU-intensive
workloads such as AI and in particular, as it relates to security? Will HPE spin-out Nonstop as a separate
business, floating it on NASDAQ? Or, will Nonstop, just as we saw in the movie,
Lucy, whereby Scarlett Johansson’s character, when asked where could she be
found, simply responded, “everywhere!”
Then
again, posting about a future world of Nonstop centered on virtualization and a
cloud presence isn’t going to move the Nonstop needle very far. But that leaves
hybrid IT where two distinct paths will likely emerge. In the everywhere
scenario, Nonstop will be present within the enterprise data center but do so
where no one knows for sure exactly where it is running. In addition, Nonstop
itself will truly become a hybrid system, more so than now, with the ability to
tap specialized chipsets, co-processors and even smart networks to the benefit
of all those looking for Nonstop to transition from purely after-the-fact
processing to where predictive processing becomes the norm.
Moving
then beyond the technology and looking at the Nonstop vendor community, change
is coming and coming fast, as in the next twelve months we will see many
traditional Nonstop vendors leave the market even as we will likely welcome new
solutions vendors. Not a whole lot of solutions vendors, mind you, but just a
selection that understand the value of fault tolerance and true 24 x 7 support.
It’s hard to ignore what abat+ have achieved in the field of manufacturing,
overseeing row after row of robots interacting with a moving production line
but the world in general has become continuous. Whether you look at e-Commerce,
supply chain, delivery services, etc. nothing stops any more – we have realized
life 24 x 7 without a plan.
It
just happened and now we see headline after headline of the disruptions caused
by technology glitches, outages and crashes. When did these become acceptable
to where many of them are no longer reported? Have we become blasé about
downtime and simply clicked on something else, accepting that well, software
will fail, right? When will HPE understand the market has changed and Nonstop
has become a premium service. Leaving Nonstop out of their current go-to-market
(GTM) plans has me wondering not so much about the silliness of such a strategy
but rather, how long is that omission going to last?
Hybrid
IT, then. When will we see Nonstop reduced to a simple utilitarian module that
IT just plugs into the network for maximum uptime? Will we be looking at a
future where continuous processing as we know feeds real-time transaction
processing, becomes the subject of just a simple module with something like a
simple HDMI plug (but industry strength), that we cable into the network and
the magic happens. Nothing fails anymore.
Consider
this post as a preview where the subject of my next Three Wishes for Nonstop
remains a work-in-progress. Perhaps this year’s HPE Nonstop Technology &
Business Conference (TBC 2025), will hold some surprises. Perhaps, the
realization of what Nonstop can deliver takes hold across the broader IT
marketplace (and I need to post no more), delivering new solutions where they
are most needed. Perhaps, ultimately, nothing changes. But that would be so sad
to see and not the stuff that would feed a futuristic post.
And
with that, I will pass it over to all of you – where do you see Nonstop headed?
If you would like to continue this conversation during TBC 2025 then let’s find
the time. Maybe all it takes is showing up for the Monday night Beer Bust as we
all know, good conversations never started over a salad, right? For now, let me
wish you all safe travels, an enjoyable and productive TBC 2025, and best of
all, plenty of opportunities to network as we all know, this is the most
important aspect of any major gathering of the Nonstop community.
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