There’s likely to be a number of articles on TBC 2020 which, by all accounts, was a huge success and therefore a “win”. Having a seat on the inside, I can verify there was a lot of scrambling early on in deciding whether to have a virtual event or not. Hope on the Coronavirus restrictions being lifted died a not so slow death and the TBC team came to grips with the fact that TBC 2020 would, out of necessity, be virtual. For the speakers, we were aligned into recorded and live sessions. At first, all of my sessions were going to be delivered live. As we came closer to the event it was requested that all sessions be recorded ‘just in case’ so that moderators could pivot to the recorded version if there were any live hiccups. A few weeks out, it was decided almost all talks would use the, now recorded, versions with speakers on-line to answer questions live. I have to say as a speaker, who really enjoys speaking, I was disappointed to not be speaking live however in retrospect, this could not have been better. The format allowed the audience to start and stop presentations and even back up if they missed a point. Attendees could truly listen to every presentation if they were so inclined not forced to choose between one or the other based on schedule. In my opinion, this turned out much better than expected. I usually spend the final two weeks before Bootcamp refining and making changes to my presentation and I deliver a presentation similar to, but perhaps not quite the same as, my approved presentation (shh do not tell Karen Copeland). At this Bootcamp, once it was decided we were going with the recorded presentations, I was surprised to find I was done. In hindsight would I have changed things? Of course. Would it have substantially improved the presentations? Probably not. I can’t speak for all speakers but for me, the virtual format was better than I was expecting. From the customers I have spoken to, the response has been very positive if not outright enthusiastic. I do know that this TBC effectively “sold out” at 2,000 attendees.
I’m sure I can say that a presentation not to be missed is Mark Pollans next-generation system. As everyone should know, the blade architecture, in general, has been discontinued by the greater HPE, as such, NonStop needed to announce a new go-forward platform system. Mark’s presentation provides the details on our next generation NS8 and NS4 platform systems. The blade systems had gone through three generations X1, X2 and X3 aligning with the HPE gen 8, gen 9 and gen 10 systems. The NS8 and NS4 are considered 4th generation and known as X4 systems. For Intel enthusiasts, this is using the Cascade Lake processor family and incorporates and corrects some of the high profile Intel vulnerabilities inside the chip. So very good news. Mark does an excellent job of discussing performance, I’ll just simply say they are faster and recommend watching Mark’s presentation for all the details, or talk with your NonStop Solution Architect. These new systems can be configured and quoted and we are on schedule to begin shipping in January.
Every presentation I saw delivered some valuable content. The product managers all delivered exceptional presentations. I always follow Roland Lemoine’s talks owing to an interest in SQL and that he gives great presentations. I have been involved in some of the virtual NonStop pilots so Prashanth Kamath’s presentations and developers talks, such as those by Marcelo De Azevedo, are of direct interest to me. If my friend Paul Denzinger is speaking I will always attend and I greatly enjoyed Franz Koenig’s updated ‘Art of the Possible’ presentation. Two presentations that were standouts for me, in a lineup of great presentations, were those given by Suveer Nagendra, TBC20-012 – A fault-tolerant NonStop Container and TBC20-020 – API Gateway – A Gateway into NonStop. These are two futures – I should say possible futures – talks on NonStop. If you’re wondering about what containers are and why they are useful you can just catch the first part of Surveer’s talk. As most of us know, putting NonStop into the thick of modern architectures requires support for current standards. Surveer’s discussion/talk on API Gateways was very interesting and worth a listen. By highlighting a few I run the risk of upsetting others which is not my intent at all. This was an outstanding virtual conference. It was well run. The content is amazing. My recommendation is to not miss any of it. Click on https://whova.com/portal/webapp/ntbc_202011/ and catch anything you missed.
I wish everyone happiness on the upcoming holidays and hope you enjoy them safely with family and may 2021 be a much better year for all of us.
Thank you