Real Time View

As we continue to review all that transpired at this year’s NonStop Technical Boot Camp 2024, there is little I can convey at this point of time. Publication deadlines being what they are means I am writing this column to The Connection well before the commencement of this most important gathering of the NonStop community in 2024. However, having said that, I have been involved in many of the advance promotions being published and expectations are high that this event will be transformational.

From the HPE side and following numerous presentations by the HPE development team, I can safely predict that there will be hardware announcements, some fine tuning of strategy in terms of product direction as I am virtually assured that NonStop customers together with industry and market feedback have influenced the NonStop development team to consolidate around just a couple of options for NonStop. Safe to say, we will still have access to conventional NonStop systems while bringing the cloud experience to each of us will hold sway even for NonStop, with the potential for some excitement across the NonStop community.

The idiom, “it never rains but it pours” closely reflects what Margo and I have been experiencing since we have arrived in Florida. Not that we are necessarily talking about events “piling on” negatively but rather, for the month of August we were subject to torrential rains almost every evening. Coming from the east coast of Australia, where summers were spent further up the coast, such rainfall didn’t come as a surprise to me. It’s simply a natural occurrence at latitudes like this at this time of year. Putting aside any negativity that this idiom may convey, when it comes to NonStop we have been able to observe these past couple of quarters just how good news for NonStop has been present in abundance.

For as long as I can remember, my association with NonStop, nee Tandem Computers, there was always a pressing need to argue in favor of NonStop from a purely financial point of view. Numerous papers were written on the true cost of ownership of NonStop, including two that I wrote and were subsequently published to the HPE web site. Such Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) calculations were oftentimes skewed towards ongoing operations for which it can be argued that NonStop is perhaps the least costly system to own over the long haul. And yet, these positive arguments ultimately fell short of being convincing.

Where the arguments begin to weaken is in the initial cost of ownership: Add up all the hardware, software, training and so forth and NonStop still represented an expensive acquisition. Surely, a cluster of SMP processors sharing a fabric (or two) where data is continuously replicated can deliver a level of availability on par with NonStop at a much lower entry price. And realistically. open-source choices make it so much easier to set up and support applications over the same long haul? Well, as one advertising refrain reminds us, we have come to better understand that, you should only pay for what you need.

Maybe from the competitors of NonStop we will hear more about it not raining but rather it’s pouring. Not to dwell too long on the theme of TCO, but rather its good to review where NonStop might maintain residency. NonStop has come so far in it’s fifty years that it is hard to imagine where it might be providing value in another fifty year’s time, but one thing is for sure, the fundamentals continue to provide value. Not to make too fine a point of it, but is it any coincidence that NonStop applications haven’t been affected by outages, glitches or operational mistakes? In a divide world, where it’s either clouds or edges, where will NonStop find and hold a presence?

Virtualized NonStop may find a place in public and private clouds. Even so, this may just be for NonStop developers or perhaps as a resource to tap for additional storage, especially when it pertains to conforming to the much-promoted rule of 3:2:1 (3 copies of your data stored on 2 different types of media with 1 copy off-site) in order to protect from bad actors looking to compromise our most important data. However, when it comes to the placement of conventional NonStop systems the possibility of NonStop residing at the edge is looking more and more likely.

Turning to my library and to my most trusted sources, motoring magazines, this month I came across the observation, “High domain controller product is capable of handling up to 60 tera-operations per second (TOPS). That’s enough computing power to provide all the sensor-fusion, computer vision, and decision-making functionality needed to provide Level-2-plus autonomous driver assist.” Part of an article published in the 75^th Anniversary issue of Motor Trend, “Why car lovers should know and care about AI and Neural Networks,” it highlights how the power of a system is no longer related to its presence in the network – cloud or edge.

In his latest article published in the August issue of NonStop Insider, NonStop and Edge Computing HPE Distinguished Technologist, Keith Moore, wrote: “The edge is the touchpoint for access to enterprise functionality. These Edge compute cases might be as frivolous as an internet toaster, or as critical as a wireless 911 connection. The first real computer that can associate to enterprise workload is at the edge. Critical needs are: availability, scalability, and security.”

By way of explanation, Keith then suggested that, “In financial services, this could be leveraged for payment gateway routing or trade routing.  For telco, edge systems are already used for 911 and alerting and going forward will be used for value added services like smart cities, robotic automaton, telemetry, etc.  Industry 4.0 or “4^th Industrial Revolution” (IR), is a current concept that seems to be taking hold. It assumes an edge compute will handle significant workload in the 4^th IR.”

If as yet you haven’t read this article by Keith and this topic is of interest then perhaps you should visit the website of NonStop Insider. More importantly perhaps, is the need to discuss where NonStop of the future might develop a stronger presence than that of today. If the power of a processor can vary significantly at the edge and the NonStop fundamentals are even more important at the touchpoints (with end-users and customers), it clearly warrants consideration of NonStop when business’ reputations are at stake.

As we look back at what was covered at this year’s NonStop TBC2024, I am left wondering how many of the conversations will address this topic. When we come to understand the importance of NonStop at the edge and realize the value it provides, suddenly the TCO takes on a whole new meaning. Perhaps it becomes more a conversation about what it will cost the business if we don’t go NonStop. By shifting attention of NonStop to the edge it also becomes a matter of not just saving the business but hold the real potential of saving NonStop!