Real Time View

“We need to be frugal with how we apply both capital and engineering resources. Given the reality that we’ve got many market segments that today remain very obvious gaps in our portfolio, we need to address those,” important for the NonStop community, who of us would have guessed made this observation? There are many parallels today between IT and other industries. The novelty of IT being different from any other business has long gone as the CEOs all share similar interests – a responsibility to provide a degree of predictability along with improved returns to each stakeholder. When I first entered IT as a “cadet” – apprenticed, as it were, to a large steelworks to learn the trade of computer programming – the internal EDP department (as it was called), was separate from the rest of the company with the understanding that there was something special about those technicians overseeing data processing. But no more – as technology is in the driver’s seat for every business; just ...

I am all about choice and having options but sometimes, I balk at having to throw anything away. When it comes to NonStop, there’s a rich choice of solutions and almost all of them are providing simple methods that help to ease-in to production …   Imagine my surprise when the email arrived promoting a fun day in a Las Vegas sand box. Literally; it was a real sand box, full of sand and not a reference to some exotic new middleware. A sandbox, too, liberally populated with tractors and scrapers – as the promotion for such an experience proudly advertised. “You know you've always wanted to play on the huge equipment you see on construction sites,” said the lead in on the web site, Dig this Vegas . “Meet at a giant sandbox in Las Vegas and receive a brief safety instruction and equipment orientation,” was how another promotional brochure started. “You'll be given a hard hat, vest, and 2-way radio before climbing aboard a real-life excavator or bulldozer for a unique and...

Changes in direction at a familiar road course, as well as in the executive team at HP together with how markets are approached all called for taking a different approach. And yet, changes are what we must do if we are to compete effectively. This past weekend saw Margo and me at the track, a road circuit outside the village of Buttonwillow, California, all weekend, firstly as mechanic for Margo on Saturday as she participated in four sessions, and then as driver on Sunday for another four sessions. This was our last outing of the year, and it will be another five months before the Vette gets to “stretch its wheels” once again. The photo above is of “Team Pyalla” setting up camp, trackside, as light was fading Friday afternoon. The circuit was created to support various configurations to keep everyone on their toes, but it featured a number of corners from famous circuits and for years has proved to be a popular location for testing and even magazine car reviews. However, for t...

It’s been some time since I was last in Sydney and I really do miss the place. For nearly two decades I have been “commuting” between Sydney and America – often several times a year. After working in the U.S. I returned to Sydney at the end of ’87 so that I could join Tandem Computers in Cupertino. I had been living in North Carolina but U.S. visa rules required me to return to Sydney, work for Tandem Computers (Australia) for one year, and then reapply for a new U.S. visa. The picture I have included here is of Sydney's famous Manly Beach! All up, not a bad deal as it gave me the chance to convince local Tandem Computers management to create a Tandem User Group in Australia – a community that was launched in 1989. I came up with the name OzTUG and it gained enough traction with the community that it remains active as an organization to this day. In early ’89 I returned to the U.S. and while I waited for the visa, I commuted between Sydney and Cupertino. In all, twelve return trips...

Getting back into the daily routine in Simi Valley, with a cup of coffee on a warm but overcast afternoon, it’s hard to believe that only the day before I had been in Prague, the Czech Republic. The occasion had been the annual European BASE24 User Group (EBUG) meeting, and the picture is of me in the old town square. Prague is a city I always enjoy visiting and it has been featured a number of times in this blog. In the November 9th ’07 posting, “ Want to be my partner? ” I wrote of how I had participated in a “Tandem Partner-to-Partner conference put on just for ISV partners,” and in the March 12th ’08 posting, “ It's still the same, just different! ” I wrote of how I had come “to Prague to catch up with HP BCS folks,” before adding “Prague is a very pretty city … (its) medieval architecture has been wonderfully preserved.” EBUG has developed quite a tradition for holding its events among the more interesting cities of Europe – from Istanbul two years ago, to Vienna last year, an...

I have just returned from spending a couple of days at the ACI Customer Exchange (ACE) event in Scottsdale, Arizona, where the theme had been “The Next Horizon”. A number of participants had wondered whether the picture selected, as the symbol of such a next horizon, was depicting a sunset or a sunrise. Perhaps the implications, of one over the other, with respect to the fortunes of ACI Worldwide, could become the subject of another blog posting, but it did remind me of another picture – The Blues Brothers. For readers who may not recall, in that movie Jake and Elwood Blues wanted to get their band back together and perform once more. Having convinced the band members to return, Jake promised them a “gig” for the evening, but as they drove out of Chicago and the afternoon turned into evening, out of desperation, Jake pulls into a bar that was promoting the appearance that night of a band called the “Good ol’ Boys” and passes off the band as the group. When he asked the publican’s wife ...

It’s very early Monday morning and I am about to head across to the ACI Customer Exchange (ACE), the annual meeting of America’s users of ACI products. The picture I have included here is of me at the hotel with my first coffee of the day. ACI customers have a very long history of using BASE24 products on NonStop. This will be the first America’s conference following ACI’s decision, late last year, to switch allegiances from HP to IBM, and I have to admit, I am very curious to how it will go. While at the European event in Vienna, in the early Spring of this year, I saw many at ACI in high spirits and looking forward to a new IBM-centric world, but I’m not all that sure it’s panned out quite as they expected. Many key members of the management team are no longer with ACI, and ACE would give me the first chance to look at many of their replacements. It would also give me the opportunity to see how the ACE community responds, and I will be particularly interested in the questions that co...

In a couple of hours I will be heading for the airport to fly home. I’ve spent five days in one of the most “classic” cities in all of Europe. Everywhere I turned, there were reminders of the glory days of the Austrian – Hungarian empire. Unfortunately, for most of the time I was captive of the hotel and the picture I have included here is from the lobby coffee shop, as I put down a few thoughts on paper. I hadn’t penned more than a few lines when the words of a Billy Joel song, “Vienna”, came back to me. Over the decades I have been a huge fan of Billy Joel and his “Piano Man” is a song that just brings back so many memories – of ITUG events in Amsterdam, for instance, where many nights ended at the Piano Bar. And I can just hear the emotion in Billy Joel’s voice as he gets into Vienna: “You've got your passion, you've got your pride. But don't you know that only fools are satisfied? Dream on, but don't imagine they'll all come true. When will you realize, Vienna w...

I have just returned from spending a few days in Omaha attending the annual ACE Focus meeting. These two day meetings provide more in-depth technical coverage than is usually found at the regular ACI user events, and ACI customers have been coming for more than a decade to hear the messages directly from company executives. The picture I have included here is of the venue of the Wednesday night social event – a reception held at a local sports bar called the ICEHOUSE. And I found this extremely ironic as my own involvement with ACI came through my association with the ICE product. For most of the ‘90s, ACI had been the global distributor for ICE and then, as we began the new millennium, ACI purchased Insession, creating a separate business unit that it named Insession Technologies. For nearly six years, as part of ACI it enjoyed a successful partnership with the NonStop community and had provided a number of solutions in communications, web services, and security. But the decision in l...