News from HPE’s Nonstop Division

Dear NonStop community,

With the “as-a-Service” business model, a product is consumed using a subscription-based service rather than purchased as an artifact and maintained by the customer. This model has often been implemented by cloud service providers where the novelty of technologies such as virtualization, multi-tenancy, and shared time slices of a system made the business model more viable for the service provider. Add the prospect of removing the data center costs from the picture for the customer, and you understand why the whole industry is going in this direction. One could summarize “as-a-Service” as a combination of 4 key elements: A new purchase model, service included, cloud experience, and off-premises options.

In reality, however, things got a little more complicated because this model is not a one-size-fits-all, far from it. In my view, one of the first symptoms of this was the introduction of the cloud lingo of the term “bare metal,” which we did not need before the cloud existed. Some customers do not want or need the virtualization layer even when going to the cloud. Another example is a discount for committed usage, where the cloud provider offers a discount if the customer commits for 3 years, just like s/w was purchased before pay-per-use came into the picture. And finally, the introduction of co-location and the concept of dedicated platforms. Some customers do not want to maintain their own data center, yet they also do not want their systems to be in the public space and/or be a tenant with subpar SLAs on performance, availability, and security. Especially when those SLAs constitute part of their competitive edge over their competitors.

So where is the sweet spot to benefit from the added value of as-a-Service without compromising and keeping your options open for governance and competitive edge? It is likely to use the best of both worlds if that is available. For HPE customers, the great news is that this best-of-both-worlds experience is available with HPE GreenLake. First, flexible consumption is not here necessary to replace the older options but comes as a great addition that fits a number of different use cases. For example, flexible consumption is great for handling load bursts without the customer committing to unused resources for the rest of the year. In this area, the perfect fit for the customer may be a combination of committed and flexible consumption. The second area that, in my mind, deserves a lot more recognition is simply services.

As outlined earlier, the business model success is typically associated with the new cloud technologies that carried all the excitement for the last two decades, but nevertheless, the “service” part of “as-a-Service,” while not viewed as the revolutionary part, is where the rubber meets the road and where the real customer experience unveils. It takes much more than just renaming your product “Cumulus DB”; create a nice web page and charge for it as a managed database. How experienced are the teams behind the service delivery? Are they familiar with only one product in isolation, or do they have a bigger perspective on the full software stack? Is the infrastructure global and easily reachable, and is the organization familiar with the most mission-critical SLAs?  What security compliance and tools they have in place are just some of the criteria that could make a whole ocean of difference between vendors’ offerings.

The Connection magazine once again touches upon a topic that matters to customers, with this edition’s theme set on managed services. Combining the best of both worlds between HPE GreenLake and NonStop, HPE can deliver the best as-a-Service experience to our customers. If you are not familiar yet with HPE managed Services, below is a very short summary, but I would encourage you to ask your local account team for a deeper dive into what HPE GreenLake and Managed Services can do for you or contact HPE via this website: www.hpe.com/managementservices

HPE Managed Services for HPE NonStop

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) offers Managed Services for NonStop Systems, ensuring continuous availability and optimal performance. These services encompass proactive monitoring, maintenance, and support to minimize downtime and enhance system reliability. From hardware to software, HPE’s Managed Services for NonStop Systems aim to provide a seamless and secure operational experience for businesses relying on these critical systems.

The Value of Managed Services

• Businesses are challenged with implementing transformative technologies as quickly and easily as possible while keeping core infrastructure and mission-critical apps up and running.
• Managing diverse technologies is difficult, requiring different tools and skills.
• Customers are selecting HPE Managed Services to increase speed, reduce costs, simplify the management of their NonStop systems, associated applications, and workloads, improve reliability, uptime, and security, and remove the overhead and costs of finding and training required technology skills.

With unique IP and automation and a team of global experts, this service delivers comprehensive monitoring, operations, administration, optimization, and continuous improvement across your entire HPE NonStop environment – freeing up your resources to focus on critical business applications.

HPE Managed Services is used today by some of the largest and smallest NonStop customers worldwide who rely on HPE to maintain the highest levels of availability and reliability they expect. Customers in Banking, Electronic Payments, Automotive Manufacturing, Telecommunications, Public Sector, Retail, and Car Rental, to name a few. In some cases, HPE Managed Services also operates and maintains the business applications, platform middleware, and OS. This can involve traditional Pathway applications as well as many other vendor-specific tools and software packages such as payments, retail, and Telco solutions. Whatever the software stack, HPE managed Services can design an operational framework to meet the specific needs of the customer.

Reduce the risks for your business and reputation.

Trust the experts to manage your HPE NonStop business-critical environment. Providing management services that monitor, operate, optimize, and administer your entire HPE NonStop stack – delivered consistently and globally to give you unified control and let you focus on innovation.

• Unique combination of people, process, and ITSM tools, with full-stack expertise across the NonStop platform.
• Delivering simplified and centralized insights to manage the entire HPE NonStop stack, including infrastructure, operating system, database, and software.
• Comprehensive 24×7 service – Always On – no on call
  • Monitoring
    • Maintaining system health, generating reports, escalating business-critical requests, and completing basic troubleshooting
  • Operations
    • Managing service requests, first-step incidents, first-level problems, and daily tasks
  • Administration
    • Completing system changes, resolving business-critical issues, managing in-depth incidents and problems, and performing root-cause analysis and determinations
  • Providing Day 1 value and beyond

Enjoy!

Roland Lemoine
HPE NonStop Product Manager