N2TUG 2024

On May 2^nd, N2TUG’s members came together for our 2024 meeting.  This year, the larger community of NonStop is celebrating 50 years since Tandem Computers first formed to create the NonStop platform, and we took the opportunity to celebrate!  Our theme was “Golden: 50 Years of NonStop.”

Just as in 2023, our event was held at the Hurst Conference Center in Hurst Texas, not very far from D/FW Airport making for easy access to those traveling to present or attend.  And the venue is attached to a very comfortable Hilton Garden Inn for convenience.

As some of you may know, back on April 8, the North Texas area was on the path of totality during this year’s Solar Eclipse.  We considered holding our meeting that day to encourage attendance; but we quickly learned that hotel room costs were 4 times as high, required prepayment in full for room blocks, and that travel in and out of the area (either by car or plane) was going to be challenging, so we chose the second of May instead.

The day kicked off with a breakfast taco buffet at 8.  At 9, President Bill Honaker of XID Software, Inc. took a short walk down memory lane to his first experience with NonStop in 1979.  The landscape then was different in many ways, and the customer base has changed a good bit.  But represented in the audience that day were representatives from 9 current customer companies (some of whom were consultants under contract to those companies), in financial, healthcare, retail and transportation fields.  We also had some memorabilia from the many years on display.

Next, HPE took to the stage with a double-header of Karen Ramirez, HPE’s North American Director of NonStop Sales, and Justin Simonds, Master Technologist.  Karen led off with a quick look at the 2024 Highlights for the NonStop division, and then Justin got deep into the Futures of the product line.

Richard Buckle of Pyalla Technologies, Industry Consultant to our Platinum Sponsor NTI, followed with a talk on current trends in Business Resilience and Ransomware, and the value of partnering with skilled NonStop vendors.

NTI’s presentation was followed by 2 of our Gold sponsors.  Jeff Boyer of XYPRO, spoke on Cybersecurity Strategies, and Mike Mitsch of ETI-NET, spoke on how customers are innovating with data backups.

We enjoyed a great lunch buffet with Steak and Salmon, some great salad and vegetables and a challenging set of desserts to choose from.

Richard Conine of HPE was again given the challenging task of presenting after lunch, while keeping everyone alert.  His weapon of choice weas to explore some ‘worst-case scenarios’ of cyber security crimes, served with suggested strategies to deal with such challenges.

Our third Gold sponsor, Ed Adams of comforte, discussed the details of the recent ACI agreement for their SecurDPS solution, and how comforte can help customers with their PCI 4.0 preparations.

Up next was Rich Greene of Ascert, talking on the ‘Power of Preparation’.  He led off discussing how his experience participating in Iron Man competitions shared many traits with preparation in planning and testing migrations of all types in NonStop projects.

Paden Holenstein of Gravic shared ways that HPE Shadowbase applies to Digital Resilience and Ransomware recovery planning.  Khody Khodayari of Idelji shared some future server management environments using AI (in a product they call iManAIge).

Gustavo Cavazos of NuWave shared the state of the art of integrating NonStop with other applications, both inside your companies and with business partners, using REST and system integration.  Mauricio Mier from OmniPayments gave an update on success stories in sending transactions to Visa, MasterCard, Amex and PayPal, and discussed new strategies appearing in customers around the world to lower the cost of doing business in those relationships.

The day ended with door prize drawings for the end-user attendees that had made it through the entire day.  Prizes were given by NTI, ETI-NET, Gravic, Odyssey, Ascert and Idelji, and we at N2TUG really appreciate it!  After that, we found time to network together at the evening reception with some creative hors d’oeuvres, wine and beer.

Again this year, the audience was very active with questions and discussion for all the speakers.  We could have used even more time in the day, but we were able to make good use of what we had.

We’d also like to thank our Silver and Breakfast sponsor Odyssey, as well as sponsor XID Software for providing Bill Honaker’s time and planning to make the day go smoothly.

We’re looking forward to seeing many of you at NonStop Technical Boot Camp in Monterrey this September and of course, we hope to see you and your associates at next year’s N2TUG Meeting.  Take a browse through our photo gallery, and hopefully it’ll help you decide to and make plans to join us!