Having
served seafood from this house since 1889, Old Key Lime House;
considered the oldest waterfront restaurant in Florida.
Our
travels in and around Florida continue. This week, our travels took us to Boca
Raton via Tampa and for many in the Nonstop community, familiar sites came into
view. Who can forget how many times SunTUG held events in the Marriott Tampa
Westshore, near to some pretty fancy restaurants. I seem to recall this became
the place to go once winter was in the process of releasing its grip on all of
us in the Midwest.
When
it comes to events, there have been many through the years that always seem to
have pulled a crowd. SunTUG (Tampa), N2TUG (Dallas), DUST (Phoenix) and more
with a number of international outliers that I can recall being enthusiastic
recipients of all things Nonstop – SATUG (still have the mug), OzTUG, and of
course GTUG and BITUG with these last two hardly being among the outlies.
As
I write this post, I am fully aware of the upcoming Nonstop HPE
Nonstop Technology & Business Conference 2025 (Nonstop TBC 25) planned for September
16-18, 2025 in The Woodlands, Texas. Are you about to head off to Texas? Will
we see you there? Check the agenda and on Tuesday, between 3:30PM and 4:15PM I
will be presenting the track (on behalf of NTI): TBC25.VT79 - AI? agentic AI?
Intelligence? Smart Nonstop customers leverage replication for integration – do
you? I have posted about this on a number of social media channels and trust
you will find the topic interesting enough that out of curiosity, you will be
attending my session.
It
was only a short time ago that I wrote about Summertime. In that post I wrote,
“Maybe it’s just the influence of the Starship program delivering new, modern,
industry-standard converged systems that has unsettled me. This is no time to
be complacent even as we should congratulate all involved in bringing the
latest offerings of the product portfolio to market.” Perhaps being unsettled
wasn’t quite what I meant to convey at the time as it pertained to the name
change from NonStop, to Nonstop Compute, and the continuing drive behind
Nonstop, setting it off along an apparent software only trajectory.
In
my column of last month, I left my moments of unsettlement behind me as I
wrote, “Safe to say, Nonstop Compute is safe. By this I mean, with
the introduction of the HPE Nonstop Compute NS9 X5 and
NS5 X5 converged systems, HPE demonstrates support of Nonstop. What it
also signifies is that the Nonstop community voice was listened to in a manner
that changed the course of the Nonstop product portfolio.” No question, the
trajectory of Starship took a turn away from what was initially described to
something a lot more palatable for the Nonstop Compute community. A real box
with familiar packaging all upgraded to deliver better performance. Getting
ready to start a conversation with your peers? No better place to do so than this
year in Texas.
Heading to Nonstop TBC25 has me
thinking a lot more about another trajectory and that being the Nonstop vendor
presence. For the Nonstop community that have regularly shown up for regional
events, it has become very apparent that there has been a gradual thinning of
this very important sector of the Nonstop community. After all, it is through
the many generous sponsorships that such regional events have been able to
sustain their mission of education, networking, and product awareness.
Clearly, solution vendors show a
preference for industry events. We see a number of the big solution vendors
turning up for HPE Discover each year but outside of that big-tent HPE
marketing event, you will more than likely see Nonstop solutions vendors at
finance, manufacturing, retail and state-sponsored events. And this leaves me
to wonder, especially given all the work put in by Nonstop Compute developers,
whether we should encourage HPE to support a Nonstop presence at technology
events – database, data streaming, security, system and solution management and
monitoring.
In other words, should our wonderful
club or association be looking further afield if the premise remains that we
want to see many more enterprises turning to Nonstop. With such a drive I have
to believe that Connect would champion such a turn even as they do a great job
showcasing the world of Nonstop Compute at HPE Discover. Why not take Nonstop
to these new worlds as after all, we now have a Starship, right? If we all want to see the presence of Nonstop
grow, can any of us see this happening if we just keep doing what we have
always done? Somewhere in the back of my mind I can hear that this is insane.
Once again, I am thankful of the
support I have received from longtime Nonstop stalwart, NTI. Steadfast and uncompromising, on all things
Nonstop as they frequently remind me – not taken aback by anything that might
distract the inexperienced vendor. For NTI, these events have become its premier
marketing vehicle and for the past couple of years, you couldn’t have missed
their solidarity with Connect and with the Nonstop team.
Going to new worlds has become the special
sauce for NTI. Turning data replication and recovery from disasters as a
starting point, with DRNet®,
NTI has leveraged replication, enhanced as data streaming, and provided a
platform that takes fresh, clean, data created on Nonstop to databases and
processes far removed from Nonstop. For Integration and for Distribution, the
presence of DRNet®
paves the way to streamline insertion into open databases including Oracle and
even DB2, and faster transportation to critical processes including analytics
and AI via the tightly integrated support of Kafka (powered by uLinga).
What has me intrigued, even more so
these days, is that with the Nonstop Compute pie remaining static, almost all
new business for the Nonstop vendor community is in migrations. Replacing
someone else’s product either because of an increased value proposition, a
better path into support and education or to tools and utilities offering
superior functionality over the competitors. This will be a topic I will
address in my session so hopefully, what I have typed here will entice you to
come and hear more on this topic.
The picture taken above was taken during
my recent travels along Florida’s Atlantic coastline. These travels proved to
be an opportunity to get out of the sun and to enjoy a piece of pie. The heat
has been relentless but then again, we expect nothing less now that we live in
Florida, a stone’s throw from the tropics proper. Being near the water always
ensures an experience with cooling breeze. For the Nonstop Compute customer,
the heat of anxiety may have been dialed back with the release of Starship but
deep in psyche, the question remains. Can we be doing more? Can we be doing
something a lot better? At Nonstop TBC 25 these are the questions we trust you
come equipped to ask! To which I can add, I sure hope we see you at this event
and that together we will enjoy a great conversation.
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