The Connection

The year is coming to a close and that means it is time for our “Best of NonStop” issue. It is jam-packed with great content (as are all of our issues!) that should help you do your job better as you learn about new happenings in the HPE world.

There is already an estimated $7B being spent on Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Deep Learning (AI,ML,DL) in banking this

This year, as was the case last year, the annual NonStop Technical Boot Camp 2021 (NonStopTBC21) became a virtual experience. No surprises really about this even as many members of the NonStop community held out in the hope that it would be a return to an in-person event. No surprises too that even with the lateness of the transition to virtual, along with the promotion of the event being free of charges for attendees, there were 1,000 participants maybe more.

SMCC, as a pioneer in Japan for Visa, has been in the payment service business for over 50 years and is one of Japan’s leading financial services companies with annual card transaction volume of over $ 180 billion. SMCC has been using the HPE NonStop server for several generations since 1983 for authorization operations that require the highest availability, reliability, and real-time processing performance.

Today, business is global, and runs 24/7. It relies on IT applications running in datacenters with constant uptime across an enterprise. Continuous access to real-time, online transactional data is necessary in a world where crucial network services drive enterprises.

NonStop servers have a long tradition in clustering, and HPE is proud to introduce new NonStop X Cluster Solution (NSXCS) features with the L21.06.01 RVU. The new NSXCS features include support for HPE NonStop NS8 servers and new cluster switches based on InfiniBand HDR 200 Gbps technology.

Do you want to learn more about NonStop clustering and its latest features? Well, you came to the right place!

APIs have seen fast growth and adoption for many years now; as of 2020, it was estimated that there are over 24,000 APIs in use, just in the financial industry. While the number of APIs used is increasing, the more important statistic is the value these APIs bring to businesses. Services offered by APIs now account for 75% of many large companies’ revenue. For example, Salesforce generates 50% of its revenue through RESTful APIs, eBay 60%, and Expedia generates 90% of its total revenue through the use of APIs. Without the help of RESTful APIs, these companies might cease to exist.

Looking back at 2021, cybersecurity remains one of the biggest and most prevalent topics in the IT industry. One security aspect has crept to the forefront in recent months – Zero Trust (ZT).

As we integrate technology in the enterprise, we see tendrils of GUARDIAN code extending outward to OSS, Windows, Linux, Mac, and towards edge computing. Components like JSON definitions and libraries are starting to be use everywhere – you only want to write your message parser once so that everyone gets the same view. We also see components from other platforms starting to inject themselves into GUARDIAN as we modernize and publish services from our mission critical legacy applications to services elsewhere.

Have we become numb to the news of security breaches? Unfortunately, the attacks on our businesses, personal lives and even global infrastructure are not slowing down. Cybercrime is up over 600% during the pandemic. According to Verizon’s 2021 Data Breach Investigation Report, 61% of cyberattacks targeted credential theft. This far surpasses personal, banking and payment card information which have been primary targets for years. The cybersecurity industry has responded with a variety of ways to protect sensitive data with regulations, technology, and awareness, which has forced attackers to look for easier targets, such as usernames and passwords.

I used to think that applying security is good as long as it does not get in the way of productivity. After all, isn’t the whole purpose of IT to improve productivity, so anything going against that golden rule is at least questionable? If security is an obstacle to productivity then it defeats the whole purpose of IT being at the service of humans and it should not be the other way around.

It’s hard to believe that 2021 is almost over. Most of us are still getting used to our post-pandemic lives. And as life slowly returns to normal, we should take a moment to reflect on the challenges and successes of the past year. The end of the year is always a great opportunity to look ahead and set goals for the future. And I am not just talking about those pesky New Year’s resolutions that we quickly forget once February comes along.

In the Sept-Oct 2021 edition of The Connection, we gave an overview of Kafka, and how it is being used by many Fortune 500 companies to manage “streams” of data, which have become prevalent as internet usage massively boosts the amount of data being generated, and requiring processing. Kafka allows these huge volumes of data to be processed in real-time, via a combination of “producers” and “consumers”, which work with a Kafka “cluster” – the main data repository.

This article highlights some interesting work from Gravic Labs, Gravic’s Research and Development group, in the area of increasing the data integrity of mission critical systems. The article expands on our talk at The Connect NonStop TBC meeting in October 2021, and is a continuation of the topic that we presented in the July/August 2017 issue of The Connection.

Most companies fail to recognize their operational data is their most valued asset simply because it doesn’t appear directly on any financial statements. Data holds valuable insight into organizational productivity, customer habits, and proactive decision making. Unfortunately, most businesses fall short of utilizing their data to its fullest potential.

Dear NonStop Community: Welcome to another issue of The Connection Magazine. What a wild summer it’s been! Planning product events

Greetings fellow community members, As summer gives way to fall, our thoughts naturally turn to all things security (I bet

In early December 2020, I had an opportunity to sit in on a virtual fireside chat with Scott Dorsey, former Founder and CEO of ExactTarget at the 2020 Instill Culture Conference. ExactTarget is a provider of digital marketing automation and analytics software that was acquired by Salesforce.com in 2013. As mentioned in a previous LinkedIn article, this conference brought together a community of forward-thinkers from sports, the military, business, academia, and the venture capital worlds to brainstorm how to build positive organizational cultures.

Deon Ballard, Principal product marketing manager, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, is quoted saying: “Sometimes you want boring. Sometimes you want reliable and predictable and all the things that you generally don’t want your first date to describe you as you really want your operating system customers to describe you like that.” I like that quote. If RHEL is boring, NonStop must indeed be comatose. Of course, Mr. Ballard is correct you do want boring in an Operating System, one that allows you to sleep well and with confidence.

After the successful upgrade I got the idea to use these servers and learn how to setup vNS on VMware. I managed to get two of these eight servers for my home LAB with the CPUs, RAMs, HDDs and the NICs. The server components were not enough to build a vNS , according to the Hardware architecture guide for HPE Virtualized NonStop on VMware. I had to spend few thousand dollars to buy the missing components like Mellanox ConnectX-4 cards, upgrade RAMs, etc…

The technology landscape is changing. Today, business is global, and it’s 24/7. It relies on IT applications in continuously running datacenters. It requires constant uptime and demands data sharing across an enterprise.

The General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, is a major piece of legislation adopted in 2018. It is designed to address the protection and responsible use of every European Union citizen’s personal data. However, GDPR is not an EU-only regulation. It affects ANY business or individual handling the data of EU citizens, regardless of where that business or individual is based.

There’s been a lot of talk over the last few years about Kafka, but what is it, and how might it impact NonStop applications and data? According to the Kafka Apache project, Kafka is “the most popular open-source stream-processing software for collecting, processing, storing and analyzing data at scale.” Kafka is used by thousands of companies, including 60% of the Fortune 100. Well known users in the finance space include Goldman Sachs, Rabobank, Barclays, Jack Henry and PayPal, and household names that use Kafka include Netflix, Oracle, LinkedIn and AirBnB.