Real Time View

As I type this Real Time View column, I am fully aware that reading it as part of this issue will only occur following the big show, HPE Nonstop Technology & Business Conference 2025 (Nonstop TBC 25). Given this, all I can write about at this point in time is of my own expectations for the event. Furthermore, even as I like the manner about which our traditional TBC has been renamed – Technology AND Business Conference – just makes more sense to me. Furthermore, given the times we live in, I cannot help but wonder how about how many more events I will attend. Who can say where this Nonstop journey will take us, but after fifty plus years, there’s no signs of the future of Nonstop being anything other than what we have witnessed in the years leading up to this point. Still running strong – don’t you just love the mantra: Can’t stop; Won’t stop; Nonstop!

At this time of year, with a major event about to happen, you will not only find me writing and posting but creating a presentation that I will be giving on behalf of my client, NTI. I am going to go out on a limb here and express my wish that many members of the Nonstop Compute community will make it a point to attend this session. I am certainly doing my bit to promote the event so hopefully, this will ensure some traction among attendees. Nevertheless, whenever I begin the thought process of how best to frame a presentation, I find it as informative for myself as I expect it might prove to be for those attending. With the background of the event highlighting Texas and its strong historical connection to cowboys, cattle drives, and rodeos, it should come as no surprise if the presentation is influenced by these connections. Even the color scheme chosen will be consistent with that emanating from Connect – lots of browns, oranges and yellows!

However, these connections to a Texas legacy and to its prevalent colors, is of lesser importance to the message coming from HPE. At the end of the day, it’s important for the Nonstop community to keep in the peripheral vision all that HPE is telling us. And with HPE Discover, it was all about Agentic AI. Launched as their new Agentic AI framework, called GreenLake Intelligence, HPE generated a lot of industry buzz. “With Agentic AI, AI is no longer just a tool. It is actively engaged in automating workflows, managing real-time decisions and driving business efficiency,” said HPE CEO during his keynote delivered in the Las Vegas Sphere. Which, of course, led to looking more closely at what this means for Nonstop. Naturally, enough, having worked with those Nonstop vendors traditionally categorized as providers of tools, utilities and frameworks, and more, it’s refreshing to spend time outside of the tools arena. But is this true or is it still very much marketing-speak?

According to one source I turned to, “Agentic AI: Artificial intelligence systems designed to act autonomously to achieve goals by perceiving their environment, reasoning through complex tasks, planning and executing a series of actions, and learning from outcomes.” Or, to be more specific and from HPE’s perspective, “The (Agentic AI) framework infuses autonomous AI agents across HPE’s hybrid cloud platform to simplify IT operations, optimize performance, and handle multi-step tasks in real time with minimal human intervention.” Back to Antonio’s remarks, “managing real-time decisions and driving business efficiency,” it seems to immediately beckon a Nonstop response.

After all, the freshest and cleanest data is created on Nonstop and for AI to perform up to the expectations of an enterprise. This data needs to be absorbed by agents working on enterprise’s behalf to improve the efficiency. What was missing however amongst the enthusiastic promotion of something this new from HPE is the timelines. Will there be an unstoppable rush to AI? Will it be the sole subject of immediate investments? Will enterprises, dare I write, pivot towards agentic AI in the belief that all their business requirements will be addressed with the frenetic waving of a magical wand?

There have always been deadlines. Set in line with imagined expectations, it is anticipated that immediate deployment of GreenLake Intelligence, this agentic AI framework, will not happen overnight. Nor might it have an immediate impact on the Nonstop community. And yet, clearly, the convergence of AI and Transaction Processing is being viewed as potentially revolutionizing how financial transactions are managed, from automating mundane tasks to detecting complex fraud in real time. Yes, “organizations can boost efficiency, enhance security, and deliver more personalized customer experiences,” makes for a compelling story line no matter the platform chosen and, in this case, it warrants further consideration even by the most jaded of Nonstop followers.

But I do love the idea of agents. Well, it would appear, be a whole army of agents. However, keep them at arm’s distance as this may very well generate the response of “not in my house!” Nonstop inherent fault tolerance is predicated on a very controlled environment being maintained and having “invaders” poking around, looking for data, doesn’t quite hold the appeal for the Nonstop community as it might do for other platforms. Then again, is the tide mounting where it will shortly become unstoppable and every Nonstop user succumbs to the demands of fellow IT professionals?

With the work I have been doing of late connecting the dots between Nonstop vendors – in this case, NTI and Infrasoft – and looking how they have integrated the basic Change Data Capture (CDC) methodology with Kafka to create a highly efficient yet simple (to implement and manage) data streaming platform. Not pursued by NTI as some kind of quick-fix, Band-Aid affixed solution, but rather, something that is natively supported on Nonstop. The point of this and what attracted me to looking deeper into the product that emerged is this is a way by which data can be delivered to where those agents can, “have at it!” without compromising anything operational running on Nonstop. And that just has to be good news for Nonstop. Still weighing your GreenLake options? Look no further for a way to seamlessly integrate with GreenLake without fully committing to the “as-a-Service” profile HPE is anxious we all embrace.

There is much more I would like to add here but much of this will be covered in my upcoming presentation but yes, this issue of The Connection magazine’s deadline is drawing near. If we had conversations at Nonstop TBC 25 or you would like to take another look at my presentation material, watch for further news as I plan on making it public on one forum or another. Drop me a line, reach out to me on LinkedIn, or simply email me if this is all a bit new to you and I will do my best to address whatever questions you might have. In the meantime, there is one more deadline looming and that is to finish my presentation, so for now, this is about all I can cover.