For the Nonstop community, the month of April always means a trek across to Europe for the annual Nonstop user conference, the first of the two major events of the year. On this occasion, the destination was Munich, Germany where the E-GTUG – European Nonstop Symposium 2026 was held. Looking at our calendar, for Margo and me it was an opportunity to spend time at sea as we did a trans-Atlantic cruise, Florida to Italy. It was then a simple flight from Rome to Munich, or so we thought.
We both like sea days as it’s a time where I dedicate mornings to work and where the absence of interruptions allows me to devote time to whatever presentation I have committed to giving. But as is common knowledge, nothing is ever simple when it comes to travel and it hit us hard. Two days prior to arrival in Italy, our flight was cancelled with no alternatives afforded us. But, a day late, we arrived in Munich as we have developed resilience to plans that get altered without us having any say in the matter. There’s always something that could work for us – if we looked hard enough.
It came as no surprise then when Casey Taylor, VP & GM HPE Nonstop, took to the stage for her keynote presentation that featured the word resilience. Together with fault tolerance, naturally enough. As Margo and I can vouch for, resilience today is clearly “more critical than ever.” When you consider the uptick of interest in all things AI – featured often across many of the vendor sessions – having a platform that is resilient will become even more critical in the coming months. To see the elevated interest in AI among the attendance shouldn’t have come as a shock to any of us following industry trends but then again, it was a surprise to see as many Nonstop customers expressing an interest in the topic.
Just prior to the start of the event, I created a poll on Whova where I asked three questions related to AI concerning the impact AI might have on Nonstop. The choices provided included –
We will wait and see.
We are tracking and learning.
We see it happening right now.
The sample size was small but meaningful as far as trends are concerned. Three quarters responded with “we are tracking and learning” whereas one quarter went so far as to express how they are seeing it “happening right now.” Just as importantly from a Nonstop perspective, there were no takers for just “waiting to see.” For a community well-known for moving at almost glacial speeds when it comes to adopting anything new – a symptom obviously of the conservative nature of the industry verticals Nonstop serves – this acceleration of interest about AI was cause for conversations.
Within the Nonstop community, Margo and I are known as “car guys.” This has always been the subject of some lively conversations with Gravic’s Holensteins. Yes, they are Porsche and we are Corvette – it doesn’t get much more competitive than that. Lesser known and against all recommendations against such purchases, we are also now a confirmed Jaguar / Land Rover family with both an F Type and a Defender. Point is, both vehicles have the same engine – the same V8 as referenced above. Having admitted that we have two of these vehicles from the same manufacturer might confirm the old adage that to enjoy this vehicle, you need to own two of them. But no longer apparently. Resilience is being promoted given these vehicles pristine reliability record.
What we are seeing today, is how the pristine reliability of Nonstop is again taking centerstage. Shining a spotlight in just how reliable Nonstop continues to be, how it is resilient in all situations faring well whether loss of a CPU or, perhaps more commonly now, a loss of location. It’s not likely that HPE will begin to feature Nonstop in advertisements celebrating the overall trustworthiness of Nonstop to keep mission critical applications running no matter what, but we as a community know that Nonstop puts even the mighty Jaguar to shame in this context.
What is highly likely however, is that as interest in AI grows and as the ability to AI-enable Nonstop applications as has recently been promoted through the partnership of NTI and Infrasoft via uLinga Nexus (developed by Infrasoft, distributed and supported by NTI) – the announcement which has been well-received in many quarters, gaining acknowledgment from Nonstop CTO Franz Koenig during his presentation at E-GTUG – will quickly develop traction within the Nonstop community. Likewise, NTI CTO Alphonse Hoge was even more positive in his musings of late, noting that, “uLinga Nexus is a monumental development allowing AI implementations to access Nonstop data.” As an easy first step to enable Nonstop applications and data being made available to chatbots, including the likes of ChatGPT and Claude, embracing Nonstop as a viable participant in enterprise AI pursuits, is bound to happen.
What quickly surfaces is the value placed on the freshest and cleanest data that appears initially on Nonstop given the speed with which AI operates. Why would you ever ignore what Nonstop sees first? It is in the same breath that we then recognize the value of Nonstop being always there; resilient, reliable and yes, unstoppable. For the remainder of this year, and in particular at the upcoming Nonstop Technical & Business Conference, 2026 (NonstopTBC26), I expect to hear a lot more about the impact of AI on our Nonstop community and if the early polling proves indicative of the interest there is on this topic, then the Nonstop community is indeed heading towards a time when fault tolerance will be valued even more highly than in previous years.
Will we see advertising of this necessary reliability? Will it feature highly at the upcoming HPE Discover event? Perhaps not, but at least we, the Nonstop community will know and perhaps it is the time we have waited for where we can walk into any gathering within the enterprise we serve and say, yes, we can! Casey Taylor’s “Can’t stop; won’t stop; Nonstop!” is what truly reflects the nature of the platform as AI takes hold and separates the winners from those who might have hesitated just a little longer.
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