It was many, many, years ago when working for Tandem Computers that I joined an initiative called NonStop Availability, or NSA as it was better known. As a participant in a small team headed by Dr Tim Chou, we worked through a number of scenarios where availability may be affected. When conclusions were reached, some of us joined Tim on a global roadshow focused on providing insights to then-current Nonstop customers.
Some of the readers of The Connection might remember how Tim was a guest speaker at a Nonstop TBC in Burlingame. This was towards the end of 2016 – yes, a decade ago – and the title of his keynote presentation was Precision Planet. Focused on IoT (and IIoT – the Industrial Internet of Things), Tim walked the audience through the major transition from “the Internet of People to the Internet of Things giving us all an appreciation that things aren’t people! Already there are more things connected than people …”
This presentation has resonated with me throughout the years. The prospect of things connected outnumbering humanity and yes, in the process, benefiting from Machine Learning (ML) and yes, AI, has left me in no doubt that we have entered a new era in the history of mankind. Having picked up a stick, killed prey, lit a fire and built a village, history is littered with many historical transformations. But, according to Tim, we are on the verge of being witness to the end of software.
More revealing, at least for me, was his observation about strategy. “Are you just adding AI features to existing products? What if you started today with the same business problem, but it’s post-November 2022, post-ChatGPT? LLM technology represents a discontinuity at least as significant as the iPhone or enterprise cloud computing,” said Tim. As for products and the creation and maintenance of software products, Tim leaves us with no ambiguity about how we build products, writing of “how fundamentally have you changed product management, development, testing, and operations based on LLM technologies? Are you adding on, or rethinking from first principles?” With the writings of Tim’s firmly planted in my mind, I raised the topic with Alphonse Hoge, NTI CTO, who provided a software practitioners perspective. “it started in the development area a year ago. And is permeating to all other areas; this is similar to the industrial revolution. The only catch is instead of taking 150 years for the industrial revolution to play out, it is happening in ten years.” Furthermore, “the social and economic impact is unprecedented. The resulting wealth concentration and gap impact will be staggering.”
Early mechanization ~1760–1830
Textiles, steam power, iron
Railway & heavy industry ~1830–1870
Railways, coal, steel expansion
Second Industrial Rev. ~1870–1914
Electricity, chemicals, oil, telecoms
Perhaps the most chilling observation made on this subject came from Alphonse when he said. “I am not a programmer but an architect; spec-driven development is now a given. Using Claude AI, I created five programs to where the future livelihoods is past being threatened by AI; it’s already dead!” Where’s the proof, you may ask? Well major corporations particularly those heavily invested in human capital are already feeling the impact today. The lates news out of Accenture confirms these observations by Alphonse:
Throughout my time as a Nonstop storyteller I have not hidden when I began my career in IT. As an IBM Assembler programmer. This was at the very beginning of 1970s. IT has been my chosen career for a very long time, spanning six decades. But never did I imagine I would be a part of an industry so close to its beginning, even as it is evident to me that it is ending. Who knew? Where the trouble lies today is how industry engages with the latest batch of university graduates who have spend many years studying IT. Will they be coming out of school only to join the growing line of unemployables destined to live on a government stipend? I worry about that close to home as Nonstop welcomes all those New to Nonstop.
If you are New to Nonstop as a seasoned IT professional at an enterprise that has only introduced Nonstop then there may be options opening up for you that align more closely with running the business. However, if you are completely new to IT, tread carefully. As they like to say, “Here be Dragons,” and an indication of dangerous or unexplored territories awaiting us! Then again, you may come to appreciate that the real demand will be for those that understand an industry segment and who become good at creating meaningful specs easily fed to an AI client / ChatBot.
As for those who view their calling as being an industry influencer, which will not disappear any time soon, being deft of foot will become a godsend. Identifying trends, articulating the benefits and perhaps pitfalls from such a trend and then encouraging others to step into roles only now beginning to appear will continue to play an important role within out industry. For the Nonstop community, there is now an identified, growing need for Nonstop evangelists prepared to become Nonstop influencers and this is a step forward the Nonstop community encourages all to consider doing.
The transformation of IT I have witnessed across almost six decades is both thrilling and daunting. Witness to the birth and then death of trends has been commonplace for me even as AI brings with it the most serious trend I have witnessed. It is an erosion of many of the principles of software I have held dear to me and yet, what we are collectively witnessing is a harbinger to a future very few of us anticipated.
Nonstop still leads the industry when it comes to availability. That is an attribute that cannot be ignored. The good news is that already at work are Nonstop vendors in pursuit of modernizing Nonstop and making it easy for LLMs to interrogate Nonstop processes and data – look for the work being done by Infrasoft in this regard – check out the Infrasoft story by Andrew Price included in the Jan – Feb, 2026 issue of The Connection: Bridging Worlds: AI Meets Nonstop Through Model Context Protocol.
And now, look for the latest article from Andrew Price, appearing in this Mar – Apr, 2026 issue of The Connection – AI and the Nonstop Advantage – how model context protocol is opening a new era for mission-critical systems.
The death of software, as we know it, may be an exaggeration but the underlying AI technology isn’t going away. Integrating Nonstop into an AI implementation might be the only path remaining open for Nonstop – is this a journey you plan to take? Will I see you on that road? Wave if this is where you are headed next time you see me at an event and yes, I will be at E-GTUG where what I have covered here will become the centerpiece of my session’s presentation.
Richard Buckle
CoFounder and Chief Storyteller
Pyalla Technologies, LLC
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