As the Nonstop community begins reading the submissions in this issue of The Connection, the reality is that Nonstop Technology & Business Conference, 2025 (Nonstop TBC 25) will have wrapped up. Will it have met the many goals set for it by HPE, the Nonstop team, Nonstop vendors, Nonstop prospects, and customers? Looking at the agenda available at the time of writing, it’s clear that several topics will have been broadly addressed. This is a good thing. An experience we look forward to sharing with colleagues. We all like to see what moves us forward and what is finding success within the Nonstop community.
In life, experience exposes us to many different opportunities and situations. All the time, teaching us to continually move forward, making sure we take the proper steps, encouraging us, too, to take time to reflect. At times, just like the ebb and flow of the tide, there are setbacks, but for the most part, that tide pushes us further up the beach. For those of us who entered the technology arena, where our career paths took us into the world of enterprise IT, there have been challenges as we face a continuum of change. There is always something about to happen out of sight, just over the horizon. But again, with experience, we know it’s coming. Yet again, the starter’s gun is about to sound!
As we continue in enterprise IT, there are many times when we prepare for the unexpected. Over the course of our lifetimes, we anticipate much. Whether it’s getting ready for school, choosing a job and entering society, taking up a sport, finding a life partner, or starting a family, it’s all part of our desire to make a go of it, whatever the situation. Buying our first car, picking up a golf club, draining our first pint, and enjoying that first vacation. As we move along a timeline where chapters begin and end, we are oftentimes left to wonder. Did we make the right choice? Did we do the best we could? Might there have been a better way?
The past Nonstop events have highlighted how eager the Nonstop community has become to ensure the decisions taken are the right ones. Furthermore, the Nonstop community remains diligent in how it goes about navigating change, considering whether the current mix of solutions, middleware, and tools continues to provide value. Here at TCM, this has become a recurring theme. Should we change our approach to security? If so, what might we consider? Should we change our development environment? Our programming languages, frameworks, and more? Is there a need to commit to open source? Will we benefit from Nonstop development’s release of Kernel Level Threading, for instance – will this open doors to a broader population of developers we can hire?
What is also a recurring theme for TCM is the question, “Is there a better way?” For a vendor offering managed services, independence assures openness, honesty, and above all, value. There are never any hidden agendas, loyalties, or “redacted information.” We value the customer relationship above all else. “When it comes to the pursuit of doing something better,” said TCM’s Andy Vasey, “doing something better is also about competition. In this regard, we shine because we are not a hardware vendor or a solutions vendor but rather, TCM is independent and willing to guide a Nonstop customer with support that provides realizable value.”
As we write this update, it’s too soon to comment on Nonstop TBC 25. Going into this event, our expectations are running high, as there’s no other time when the Nonstop community gathers in such strength. It’s a time where there will be explanations given, products demonstrated, conversations begun, and almost constant buzz from the many networking opportunities such an event affords attendees. It’s a time, too, when new Nonstop converged systems are arriving at many locations. The newly released HPE Nonstop Compute NS9 X5 and NS5 X5 converged systems are sure to be central to the Nonstop teams’ messaging, even as we expect to see many of our Nonstop customers embrace this latest server offering.
“But will we see our Nonstop customers continuing to go down the same, well-trodden path that they have always followed?” said Andy Vasey. “Will we face questions over whether staying with what we have is an ideal solution when the systems are becoming faster? Will we face increasing pressure to integrate with AI offerings, for instance?” Yes, our expectations going into this event are such that we fully anticipate being challenged on many fronts about what is needed and the subsequent direction required to simply do a better job. Value is a measurable, but evaluating what is a better way requires access to experienced managed services providers, and “this is what we do best,” said Andy Vasey.
Nonstop TBC 2025 is not the only event for which we are getting prepared. The Regional User Community (RUG) has more events planned for 2025. The next stop? The Netherlands. “TCM is looking forward to presenting at INNUG (Netherlands) on October 28, 2025,” said Andy Vasey. “Our participation is a reminder that the Nonstop community spans the globe, and we in TCM value the two-way communications that always occur at such gatherings.”
Our lives will always face challenges. That tide keeps pushing us further up the beach. Victories will come even as there will be setbacks. The challenge then that becomes less arduous is the one that is a shared challenge, and for TCM, coming out of Nonstop TBC 25, we expect that we will be there for our Nonstop customers, providing a better way to deploy Nonstop within the enterprise IT organization. Let’s hope that, as you read this article, neither of us comes away disappointed but fully equipped to do it better!
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