Real Time View

Hybrid IT is the new normal, according to one HPE blogger, for the NonStop community it may only be a matter of time before the plans of both NonStop and hybrid IT intersect … Let’s face it. There are many disruptions that can interrupt our routines. Not that long ago I was a regular at the local fitness center but now, having moved, I haven’t found a new place to go exercise. I have always loved to walk and there will be some of you from my time at Tandem Computers who may recall that most mornings I could be seen with fellow walkers striding the sidewalks of Cupertino. Even when I lived in Simi Valley I would devise a routine that had me cirling the shopping center where my Starbucks was located so that I could eke out a 20 minute walk. I don’t know what it is but I am horrible at improvising and unless I have a set time and place to do something, I find ways to duck whatever task or activity I had set out to do. On the other hand, we only just coming out of winter here, alon...

With HPE CEO Antonio Neri posting and tweeting – HPE strategy is becoming clearer and it is all good news for the NonStop community! Most of my background in IT is well known to the NonStop community but this isn’t the time to dig into the archives and reflect on past accomplishments. However, and just an observation in passing, for someone who was often told that he would find it hard to stick to doing just one thing well, maybe there is a story here after all. The NonStop community is witnessing change, but change a little different from what the rest of IT is observing. Yes, we are embracing hybrid IT in one form or another and yes, we are coming to terms with virtualization, provisioning and software-defined-everything. And yet, for the NonStop community, change is happening in unforeseen ways as it wrestles with where NonStop is headed amid concerns about “what is NonStop!”  Expressed differently, are we happy to be given more options as to how we deploy NonStop or ar...

It is becoming all too clear. For the NonStop user the world is changing rapidly as we move to hybrid IT and look to a virtualized NonStop. Where will find the help we will more than likely need? Only this week I was visiting our new off-premise storage facility where we are now storing vehicles we can no longer accommodate on-premise, at our home. The company command center – yes, our faithful RV that many of you have seen at recent RUG events, our motorcycle, our trailer and even our fifteen year old Corvette “track toy!” It is not a cavernous storage facility by any means but it does come heated and with a number of different power outlets including one 30amp circuit which should be enough to keep the command center’s refrigerator working and the drinks chilled. Now, all we need is a couple of chairs and we have a new weekend retreat! Well, perhaps not … Fortunately it is all rather simple and we don’t need to have someone present looking after the facility. There is a mana...

HPE produces financial results that encourage the financial community; other communities take note – when it comes to mission critical servers, NonStop continues to excel! I know there are still a number of months that need to pass by before we all start making our plans to attend HPE Discover 2018. It will be held, yet again, in Las Vegas and will run from June 19 to June 20. According to the advance promotion of the event, it will showcase just how best to, “ Simplify Hybrid IT, innovate at the Intelligent Edge and bring it all together with HPE Pointnext services. Explore new, powerful methods of handling your data. Learn how to take advantage of the next big idea, seize the next new business opportunity and leapfrog the competition.” For the past couple of years I have been a guest of HPE, representing Mission Critical Systems and NonStop Systems, as an independent blogger and part of the group that HPE calls the “influencers” – and yes, a huge thank you to HPE for includin...

Who knew? Computers will be watching and learning more about us in order to satisfy themselves that yes, it really is us initiating a transaction and for HPE and NonStop, this is heralding the age of analytics and AI! Back on land, after a short voyage back and forth between Long Beach and Hawaii, despite all the steps we took to mitigate interaction with fellow passengers, I managed to catch the dreadful flu that was going around and not only did I catch it, but passed it on to Margo. If you haven’t been keeping up with my Facebook, twitter and blog posts this may be news to you, but even as I am now close to good again, Margo still has a few days to go. Of course, we avoided the buffet lines, rarely ventured into the public eat-anytime dining rooms and essentially, ate at the specialty restaurants even as we stuck to one café and one bar. All good, but no matter what steps we took clearly they weren’t enough! On the other hand, none of this proved to be a distraction to s...

As often as we hear, “open to the elements” and we cringe, for NonStop users, open is a good thing – but it’s even better with help from service providers … Well, the weather isn’t doing us any favors even if it is nowhere as bad as what we are looking at for the US Mid-West and East Coast It’s SuperBowl Sunday and with the venue being Minneapolis it’s safe to say it’s really, really, cold. Thank goodness the venue will be inside a dome, but just making the trek from car to stadium will be a challenge for many. Forecasters are telling their audiences that frostbite will set in within 30 minutes so spectators will need to be careful. And yet, it is football after all and many a time we have seen games played in atrocious conditions inside of stadiums open to the elements. We want to be close to the action sometimes and feel as though we are truly involved in the game, but there are limits after all. On the other hand, more clubs are spending the billion dollars it takes to b...

The installation of a RING doorbell made it a lot easier to see who’s at the door. When it comes to detecting movement across an industry, wouldn’t it be nice to have a RING for NonStop! As we slowly put the holiday season behind us, with all the gifts unwrapped  as is so often the case at times like this, one gift stood out for us more than any other. Maybe it was the surprise the gift generated or simply the relevance of it – either way, we ended up being very thankful for the gift. This time, it turned out to be the gift from our daughter – a RING digital doorbell. On her visit to our new home she was surprised to see our door did not have a glass panel or even a peep hole so there was no way we could tell who was at the door. We have now had the RING installed and we loaded the app to both of our smartphones and we simply don’t know how we lived without the RING! Like many of you, we suspect, we overdid it this year with our online shopping. It was just so easy to do a...