Periodical

It’s Time to Dry Our Tears and Move On Out of the ‘Waiting Room’ It’s refreshing to me to occasionally see honest

We have seen amazing progress in terms of digital transformation based on the pandemic. Indeed there was no choice. Those lucky enough to have jobs that lasted through the pandemic had to work from home.

The Options to Improve Outcomes and Keep Users Happy Because system outages occur, the main choices to get past the

Mission-critical edge processing The HPE strategy evolves around the idea that corporations will use a mix of on-prem private cloud

In a recent article in Forbes magazine, Steve Denning, a leader in agile management, leadership, and innovation, persuasively argues that only the agile will survive. He suggests that COVID-19, which we all agree is now the mother of all disruptions, will accelerate a new way of working, playing, learning, leading and even living. Denning views business and strategic agility as the largest differentiators for the future. In my view, agility just gets you to the starting line. Adaptability wins the race!

With the value of data losing value in seconds, minutes or hours – time is of the essence to maximize data value to improve decision making – with immediate insights, to add intelligence to processes, create opportunities, etc. For those interested in meaningfully improving outcomes by maximizing data value and innovating for impact – these are core ingredients for success in an on-line, real-time, all-the-time world.

There is a Gartner concept called Bimodal IT which is the idea that most customer datacenters are run with two

Raising the Bar on Employment Engagement with Impactful Digital Solutions Those who know me know that I am obsessed with

Well, 2020 is behind us, although it hardly feels like it. Economies around the world, barring China, are under-performing. Various countries have flirted with reopening only to have a new wave of coronavirus spike causing them to fallback. Technology thrives and online has become just about the only line available.

There’s likely to be a number of articles on TBC 2020 which, by all accounts, was a huge success and

Firstly, I want to thank CONNECT, HPE, partners, vendors, and users alike who helped to make this year’s, virtual TBC

When it comes to system availability, whether for “ cloud computing “ or on a “ platform “ , people frequently hear about ” 9’s ” of uptime.  Many service level agreements (SLAs) specify at least 99.9 % availability (3 9’s  – or –  < 9 hours of downtime / year), or, 99.99 % (4 9’s – or –  < 1 hour of downtime / year).  In conjunction with this, to further define system performance, the SLA Availability Metrics agreed on need to be from the End User perspective and apply from the time the application initially goes live.

High-Performance Computing (HPC) also known as the technology required for Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) is getting even better.  I have a great interest in this and if you’ve seen some of my AI presentations I show a low-latency NSADI link between NonStop and the HPE Apollo HPC systems.

With cyber-crimes increasing at an alarming rate daily, securing and protecting enterprise data is a top priority for all organizations. NonStop has long been touted by users as the company’s “crown jewel” for overseeing mission-critical applications, so it should be a top priority to protect NonStop applications and its content. That being said, it is important for NonStop users to avoid using custom solutions that might create the misconception that the platform is non-compliant and/or legacy.

Well we at HPE continue to work from home.  I was doing that anyway so my only change was never going out.  When I do I’m complying with mask recommendations and washing my hands often.  My youngest son is worried about me, which is very endearing.  He always offers to do the shopping but every once in a while you just want to pick your own peaches.  I never appreciated a trip to the store so much.  I’m sure everyone has their own stories to share and hopefully, we may be able to share them at the Bootcamp but we are still waiting to hear if that will be live or virtual.

The pandemic, which we are currently experiencing globally, has created chaos in the business world. Corporations scramble to deal with an uncertain economic future. Many projects or initiatives have been deferred till later this year, and in some cases, next year, or even indefinitely. The immediate strategy is to leverage current assets and extend and maximize their values. The NonStop has always proven to be the most reliable and cost-effective platform, supporting thousands of mission-critical applications worldwide every day. In these uncertain times, investment in the trustworthy NonStop platform through modernization will return more benefits than migrating to other platforms.

Recognizing the NonStop community is technically oriented with people having many years of system experience, it’s understandable that comfort is high when “The Topic Du Jour” is about technology.

As we’ve been thinking more about the future of NonStop in this newly established column, an item of real concern has been how to continue to build community among vendors and customers, in the absence of users group gatherings. With most companies, including TIC Software, working remotely, how do we reach across the screen, so to speak, to cultivate key personal relationships?

Satisfying today’s very demanding applications and business needs is a made to order scenario for NonStop.  As the following chart highlights, NonStop is a superior platform for enterprises if the goal is to improve outcomes.  The platform options to support applications essential to business success are summarized in the following chart.

If you follow my column (and if you do, thank you), you know that I tend to favor the ‘Trends’. I confess the technology does hold more fascination for me but it is high time to discuss some NonStop success. Now, first off, NonStop is a unit inside Mission-critical systems which is a business unit inside High Performance Computing which all rolls up to Compute within HPE which is still just one of several major business divisions. I say this because I don’t want the percentages I am going to disclose to be interpreted as a recommendation to buy or to not buy HPE stock. That would be between you and your financial broker. Also the percentages I am discussing refer, this issue, to North America. So that being said and without disclosing any real numbers I am okay in relaying that so far this year NonStop is about 15% up revenue-wise over last year (Y/Y). This quarter NonStop is up over 30% (Q/Q). And for the year so far we are tracking over budget. So wins are definitely happening. Since I do not have customer permission to disclose any specific names let me just say that major banks, major retailers and major credit card companies continue to be pleased and are investing in their NonStop mission-critical systems. The x86 platform systems are the predominant platform that is selling, and the latest systems (HPE Gen 10 or for us X-3) takes full advantage of the HPE silicon root of trust, making it the most secure x86 architecture available. See this article on HPE cyber security or search the website for Cybersecurity or silicon root of trust. Pretty cool stuff. If you have an existing Gen 8 or 9 system (X-1 or X-2) you may consider a processor swap to the latest Gen 10 (X-3) processors. They are faster and have the added security built in (see link above). If you saw my last article on the old syndromic surveillance pilot, I am happy to say that there is renewed interest in that solution both in the United States and overseas. We are seeing the criticality of systems as Covid-19 is cresting in the United States and starts, hopefully, to begin to decline.

Many clients and users at TUG meetings have expressed concerns to me about losing experienced members on their Nonstop team. These team members work in different groups, such as development, support or operations for the NonStop platform. Their contributions are crucial in the ecosystem of their company’s mission critical applications.  There is great concern in losing that pool of expertise.

Under the circumstances, hope everything is going as well as can be expected. All the best in getting through a very difficult time with the Coronavirus.

With the pandemic upon us I believe the value of NonStop is paramount.  As many are aware GE Healthcare, the NonStop healthcare solution partner, existed the enterprise side of the business, relinquishing that market to their competitors Cerner and Epic.  However NonStop has done more in healthcare and I wanted to tell an older story that becomes very applicable to today’s environment.