Tandemworld eNewsletter for July 2011

Where’s Waldo?

We are pretty busy these days. It seems like someone is always flying off somewhere to present DRNet or to assist with an installation. My office tracks me down by sending out a “Where’s Waldo?” email message. I just got off of a plane last night, returning from a visit with our Customers in Australia, and from a planning meeting with our partner comForte in Singapore. This morning I realized that I owed an article to Dave Barnes for this month’s TandemWorld. Forgive the briefness of my update.

Last week NTI attended OZTUG in Sydney. It was a pretty good event. From the room it looked like 100+ NonStop Users attended. It’s great to see this much enthusiasm for the Tandem. HP showed us the hardware roadmap going out the next couple of years. The processor power curve is pretty impressive. HP’s focus on converting Oracle databases over to NonStop SQL offers a fresh new approach to bringing new applications to the Tandem. If you haven’t had a chance to attend an HP briefing, you should give them a call and ask them to stop by. Great stuff is in the pipeline for the Tandem over the next couple of years.

NTI has quite a few Customers in Australia. We took a number of them out for a dinner cruise around the harbor the night before the conference. It’s always great to catch up with our Users and to find out what’s going on in the local market.

The end of last year NTI partnered with comForte for distribution of DRNet into Asia. Say Kuan Koh heads their Singapore office. I know SK from years ago when he headed Insession’s Asian office. It’s good to be working with him again. We are pretty excited about our partnership and expansion into Asia.

I headed over to see our friends at the HP Singapore office. We all think there is big potential with the Asian NonStop market. Many customers are considering hardware refreshes. Many customers are considering expanding their DR models from single direction to full Active/Active. This is perfect for NTI. DRNet has supported full Active/Active configurations for over 20 years.

Back home at the product factory there’s good stuff in the pipeline. In the coming months we will be launching our next version of DRNet with enhanced MX features. We are always looking for customers who want to take an early release to check out the new features.

Out in the NonStop community we continue to be interested in supporting RUGS (Regional User Group’s). If your group is looking for a meeting sponsor, give us a shout and we will see what we can do for you.

So, in a nutshell:

·       New Release

·       New Customers

·       New Partners

·       A few New Employees

·       New and creative uses for DRNet

·       Same Old Reliable NTI. 25 years old and still growing.

Cheers

Jim McFadden

Jim.McFadden@Network-Tech.com

ETI-NET Adds 8 Gbps Fiber Channel to BackBox™ for HP NonStop Systems

8 Gbps FC Support for Virtual Tape on G6-based CLIMs

ETI-NET the leading provider of advanced network and channel backup technologies for HP NonStop Servers, announced the availability of 8 Gbps Fiber Channel support for its BackBox virtual tape product family, permitting higher transfer rates when connected to HP’s new G6-based CLIMs that were announced with the HP Integrity NonStop Blade System NB54000c.

This capability is retroactively applicable to currently installed BackBox systems as well.

“As customer data grows and backup windows shrink, there is continual pressure to accelerate backups. The new high-speed FC connections further reduce backup bottlenecks and compliment use of BackBox on quad-core NonStop Blade systems.” said Andrew Hall President of ETI-NET.

ETI-NET develops products which help customers manage the complexities of the multi-vendor computer systems. ETI-NET products are designed to easily integrate storage resources from dissimilar computers and provide cost-effective consolidation and management of backup and archiving operations. With a product development center in Montreal Canada and field operations centers in Boca Raton, Florida, San Mateo, California, and Chesham, United Kingdom. ETI-NET has been shipping products for NonStop systems since 1987. ETI-NET supports customers worldwide and can be contacted by phone at +1-561-395-2278 or by email at information@etinet.com.

BRIGHTSTRAND SECURITY REVIEW

Today, the task of building and maintaining IT systems is more complex than ever before. The need for business continuity, an increase in critical transactional links to other systems, the use of virtual machine technology and personal privacy requirements, to name but a few, all place security into focus. This is all in an environment of increasing regulation by government and industry organizations, e.g. Sarbanes-Oxley, ISO 27001/27002 (formerly ISO 17799) and PCI.

Businesses now have to ensure that their investments in security are delivering on the promised protection of their IT environments. Does the business make best use of security products and services? Does the business follow best practices? Is exposure to risk minimised?

Customers are finding that a Security Review from an independent third party is now welcome before they are exposed to a searching Security Audit.

This is where BrightStrand International can help. We have skilled and experienced NonStop Security consultants who can undertake detailed Security Reviews to ratify that your security is sound or to identify situations where it can be improved. BrightStrand can then work with you to apply any necessary changes to meet today’s stringent Security standards.

BrightStrand continues to deliver a full range of services that include:



·       Systems and Operations Management

·       Performance and Tuning / Capacity Planning

·       Database Design and Administration

·       Communications Subsystems

·       Web Services

·       Security Reviews

·       IBM WebSphere MQ Series environments.

·       NonStop Integrity and Blade Migrations

·       System Healthchecks (Pre or Post-Migration)

·       Specialist Consultancy

·       Disaster Recovery and Service Continuity Planning

All, or some of these elements can be brought together in a Fully Managed Service that can be tailored to the particular needs of the customer – including remote bridging, hosting or operations support, adding further value to the BrightStrand quality services.

Call Dave Stewart today on +44 (0)7831 775115 or email him on dstewart@brightstrand.com for more information.

iWAMS (integrated Web Administration Management Suite) is based on PHP, Apache and MySQL, running on the NonStop Platform, where the interface to iWAMS can be any browser.
t is the central administration platform for all GreenHouse products (e.g. SECOM, FTPSERV-E, TALIS etc.) as well as SAFEGUARD (replaces SAFECOM and SAFEART).

PManager is a new module, allowing the password change of GUARDIAN, Alias, and Generic users, where the person, performing the change, does NOT need to have owner rights on the user in question.

§ The Owner of PManager introduces persons to the system, which are allowed to manage users and their passwords.
Multiple owners of PManager are supported.
Wildcards are supported.
Similar to OBJECTTYPE in SFG.

§ The configured persons can only change a user’s password.
Persons as well as users support wildcards, e.g.:
Person GHS.* is allowed to manage user *.*, but is denied to manage user SUPER.SUPER

Passwords can be typed in manually, or by clicking an icon: The click causes PManager to generate a SAFEGUARD conform password.

In case the user’s description text contains an e-mail address, the password is hidden to the person, performing the change, and sent to the found address, else the generated password is displayed to the person and has to be communicated to the user.

New passwords are automatically expired, and have to be changed at the first logon time.

PManager comes with its own security mechanism and auditing besides the one of SAFEGUARD. It records all management access changes, and all password changes.
The TALIS (Trace and Log Information System) module of iWAMS makes the analysis of the PManager audit information a breeze.

PManager is intended to offload the password management from the operating department to e.g. a call center WITHOUT the need to give ownership to them!

The recent HP-sponsored study on cybercrime costs (“The Second Annual Cost of Cybercrime Study”, conducted by the Ponemon Institute http://bit.ly/ql8JXP) produced a wealth of interesting and valuable data on the increasing costs of cybercrime. Some of the key points of the study, which looked at a sample of 50 US organizations, included:

· The average annualised cost of cybercrime to each company was $5.9M, ranging from $1.5M to $36.5M

· These figures represent a 56% increase over the inaugural study conducted last year

· The number of attacks increased by 45% from last year’s study. The companies studied were affected by a total of 72 attacks each week – an average of 1.4 attacks per company per week

· 90% of all cybercrime costs were caused by malicious code, denial of service, stolen devices and web-based attacks

· Average time to resolve cyber attacks was 18 days, with an average cost of $416,000 per attack – a 67% increase from 2010

· Smaller companies are not immune from cyber attacks, and in fact these attacks cost smaller companies more on a per capita basis

· Deploying SIEM solutions can mitigate the impact of cyber attacks. Organizations with SIEM solutions in place realized a saving of 25% because of the ability to quickly detect and contain cybercrimes.

· Companies that deployed a Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) program saw significantly reduced costs associated with cyber crime when companies that did not have a GRC program. Average costs for the GRC group were $6.8M versus $9.4M for the non-GRC group

…recovery and detection are the most costly internal activities, highlighting a significant cost-reduction opportunity for organizations that are able to automate detection and recovery through enabling security technologies.

Reading between the lines of this summary, a few things come to light. A large number of cyber attacks are “inside jobs”. Malicious code, stolen devices and other forms of attack are only practical when conducted by insiders. As such, putting controls in place within the enterprise is critical. As mentioned in my last blog, ensuring that employees have the ability to do the tasks related to their jobs, and nothing more, is of utmost importance. The ability to track commands and security events at a granular level allows for quick identification of cyber attacks, and is key to reducing the number and duration of attacks, and therefore the cost. SIEM devices, whilst extremely useful, need to have data fed to them from all systems and applications in the enterprise to ensure early detection of issues.

Additional methods of detection should also be considered – have critical files had attributes changed? Have users been given access that they previously did not have? Have privileged programs, that may be malicious, been installed?

In the NonStop environment, only the XYGATE security suite from XYPRO provides all these capabilities, in an integrated, centrally managed solution. XYGATE Access Control ensures that only the necessary levels of access to system resources are granted. All commands and subcommands are audited. XYGATE Merged Audit integrates consolidated audit data on the NonStop, to give a unified view of all security activity. It optionally feeds that data to SIEM devices, allowing the NonStop to participate in the single view of the enterprise.

Perhaps most importantly, XYGATE Compliance PRO monitors a wide range of data on your NonStop, and alerts you when aspects of your system configuration fall outside previously defined boundaries, including unauthorised PROGID’ed programs, users with unauthorized access and unauthorized files on system volumes. Compliance PRO can also compare files from one scan to another, alerting the security administrator if the file size changes, or if the security configuration from two systems that previously matched are now different.

So, as the incidence and costs of cybercrime continue to rise, it becomes even more important to pay attention to your critical data and applications, and the users who are able to access them. Automating as much of this process as possible is important in reducing the time for detection, and therefore the costs of these incidents. XYPRO can help with this – please contact me at andrew_p@xypro.com or your local XYPRO representative for more information.

comForte continues to invest in strategic partnerships in order to widen its footprint around the world. comForte recently appointed

· System's ASAP in Buenos Aires as its distributor in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela, and

$Description: C:\Users\TB48D~1.GLO\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\02\clip_image001.jpg$

$Description: C:\Users\TB48D~1.GLO\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\02\clip_image002.jpg$

Get Your Complimentary White Paper

''Improving HP NonStop Efficiencies Using

Data Modernization & Virtualization'

Download Now at http://bit.ly/njPQy7

Your organization may be using virtualization technologies without realizing the benefits of data federation for accessing data stored in Enscribe files and SQL tables. By not using these capabilities, you're missing out on valuable opportunities to support your business with the information it needs to compete.

Get your complimentary newly-released

white paper, 'Improving HP NonStop Efficiencies Using Data Modernization & Virtualization'.

You'll gain valuable insight to improve real-time data integration, including:

The latest trends for modernizing HP NonStop
How data virtualization eliminates barriers to data access
Why a single view of data using virtualization is a priority
Critical capabilities of data federation you need now
And a lot more!

Plus, learn how Attunity Connect and Attunity Federate software simplifies access to this important information.

Get your white paper now!

Download now at http://bit.ly/njPQy7

Modernize? It requires more than a re-set!

[comForteLounge Blog by Richard Buckle]

It may not be the first time the subject of modernization has been raised, but in this introductory post featuring comForte’s modernization suite, there will be more illuminated than is typical from just the flick of a switch!

There are many slogans and mantras floating around within IT these days, and they all hold forth the promise of making our lives a lot easier. Whether we are financial analyst wanting the latest stock prices, or security managers protecting corporate information, or simply warehouse managers wanting more complete inventory data when it comes to interacting with a company’s IT capabilities, we just want to spend only the amount of time we absolutely have to staring at the screen in front of us!

Read the latest comForteLounge blog (and more) at http://comfortelounge.blogspot.com/

Come and see us at these upcoming events in 2011

VNUG, Stockholm, Sept 5-7

PCI Community Meeting North America, Scottsdale, AZ, Sept 20-22

GTUG, Germany, Berlin, Sept 21-22

BITUG Security SIG, London, Oct 12

PCI Community Meeting Europe, London, Oct 17-19

ACE Asia Pacific, Singapore, Oct 18-20

CTUG, Toronto, Oct 26

BITUG BIG SIG, London, Dec 8

Stay connected:

$Description: Description: C:\Users\TB48D~1.GLO\AppData\Local\Temp\enhtmlclip\Image.jpg$ $Description: Description: C:\Users\TB48D~1.GLO\AppData\Local\Temp\enhtmlclip\Image(1).jpg$

XYPRO Announces the Launch of its New Website

XYPRO is pleased to announce the release of our new website, designed with a fresh, user-friendly experience. The new XYPRO website is specifically designed to make critical information easily and readily available for our customers and prospects. New and improved navigation will allow existing customers to quickly access key information (once securely logged in) via the XYPRO Customer Center.

Here are some additional highlights from the new site:

Products
The updated product pages have been redesigned to provide product information in an easy and logical format.

Resources
A Resources bar has been added as part of the navigation, which allows you quick access to whitepapers, success stories, and webinars. You can also sign up for classes and keep up-to-date on the latest HP NonStop events.

Social Media
Follow us on our blogs, twitter, Youtube and Facebook. You can also get quick answers to your questions on the XYPRO LinkedIn Group!

Please take a moment to check out the new website: www.xypro.com

Barry Forbes
VP of Sales & Marketing
XYPRO Technology Corporation
www.xypro.com

*Be sure to complete our updated survey! You’ll be automatically entered for a chance to win a TouchPad.

Please note that you’re still eligible to win even if you completed the survey last quarter.
Simply click here : http://www.xypro.com/survey

How to Raise the Efficiency and Quality of the Outsourcing of

Software Maintenance and Modernization to Foreign Countries

What’s the problem?

Developers working with Outsourcing Providers are often not familiar with the applications they have to work on. So, a good deal of the advantage of low wages is lost to time with learning and communication. And, wages will raise over times anyway.

What’s the solution?

After only four hours of training, a developer can find the impact of a change to the entire system with a hit rate of 100% with ITP-PANORAMA. A selection, search or analysis is answered in a second. In a flow chart type graph, a developer can browse through all applications and programs.

An unique Data Flow Analysis allows following the value chain of variables in a diagram.

ITP-PANORAMA helps cleaning up the code, calculates ongoing functions points and tells the developer what the full structure of the code is. (Even for old poorly documented code such as ASM, COBOL or PL1)

What’s the result?

80% of learning and 90% of analysis time can be saved. ITP-PANORAMA provides immediate impact analysis that is 100% accurate. Thus, communication time will be saved and the quality of the changes will as high as possible, because developers have a full understanding of what they are doing.

Conclusion:

No one would build a car factory in India without robots, just because the wages are low. So, why not giving developers an environment where they can work with high efficiency and quality?

You will only believe it, when you see it. So, please contact us for a free Webinar.

US: +1 855 475-2883, UK UK: +44 1592 770081, EMEA: +49 89 6491-9067

For more information: www.itp-panorama.com

XYPRO in Your Neck of the Woods

We’re traveling the globe, spreading the word about all the exciting product plans and features we have in store.

Come visit XYPRO at:

August 16 - OZTUG Annual Conference

Novotel Sydney

Sydney, NSW, Australia

October 17-20 - ACE Asia Pacific

Singapore, Singapore

http://www.aciworldwide.com/News-and-events/Events/Asia-Pacific-PRM-user-group-2011.aspx

August 18 - DUST

Arizona

October 26-27 - CTUG

Mississauga, Ontario
www.ctug.ca

September 5-7 - VNUG

Stockholm, Sweden
www.vnug.biz

November - GTUG

Germany

www.gtug.de

September 20-22 - PCI Security Standards

North American Community Meeting
Scottsdale, Arizona USA

www.pcisecuritystandards.org

Nov 29 - Dec 1 - HP Discover 2011

Vienna, Austria

www.hp.com

October 12 - BITUG
Security SIG
London, England

www.bitug.com

December 7, 8 - BITUG

7th Dec Education Day

8th Dec BIG SIG (including Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity)

London, England

www.bitug.com

October 17-19 - PCI Security Standards

European Community Meeting
London, England

www.pcisecuritystandards.org

*Be sure to complete our updated survey! You’ll be automatically entered for a chance to win a TouchPad.

Please note that you’re still eligible to win even if you completed the survey last quarter.
Simply click here : http://www.xypro.com/survey

Upcoming Tandem Modernization Webinar

Registration is now open for NuWave Technologies' next webinar, "NonStop Modernization: Getting Started Today".

On September 15th (at noon EDT), Kathlika Fontes will describe some of the challenges that Tandem users face and how they can be overcome through application modernization. She will also illustrate the benefits of web enabling HP NonStop applications and transforming the way you do business--today. NuWave's lead developer will get into the technical details of NuWave's modernization software, provide a live demo, and answer questions.

The complete agenda is as follows:

§ Drivers to modernize NonStop applications

§ Challenges to modernization

§ Benefits of web enabling applications

§ Why to modernize today

§ Features to look for

§ Common questions

§ Software demo

Space is limited. Register now for this exciting event!

Gravic Receives Great Feedback from Annual Customer Survey

The Shadowbase Products Group recently conducted its annual customer survey to help us better understand our customers’ future data replication needs and to align our development efforts to produce the products and services important to them. We thank all of our customers for their continued support, and want to congratulate two of the survey respondents for their timely submissions: Rich Stephansen and Danny Houee – each won an Amazon Kindle.

Please Visit Gravic at these Upcoming 2011 Shows

· VNUG Conference, Stockholm, 5-7 September

· InNUG NonStop Open World 2011, Kovalam, Kerala, India, 22-24 September

· ACE Asia Pacific 2011, Singapore, 17-20 October

· CTUG Fall Conference, Toronto, 26 October

· ACE Africa 2011, Johannesburg, 15-16 November

· BITUG BIG SIG, London, 9 December

Gravic, Inc. is a privately-held corporation located in Malvern, PA, about twenty miles west of Philadelphia, PA, USA. Gravic makes a number of computer software products for data collection, transformation, and distribution uses. Customers of its Shadowbase data replication products include banks, financial and brokerage firms, insurance companies, stock exchanges, electric utilities, healthcare, and telecommunications companies. For additional information about Gravic’s products and services, including free white papers on how Shadowbase data replication solutions can solve your company’s business continuity, data integration and synchronization, application modernization, and real-time business intelligence challenges, please visit: www.gravic.com/shadowbase.

NSWi

Are you a European NonStop User?

Do you require a Full Time / Part Time Resource boost to Cover New Projects, Maternity / Paternity leave etc.?

Do you have NonStop Customers based in EMEA that require Local Support of Hardware and Software?

Nonstop World International (NSWi) can help.

We are currently providing Local Support to Vendors outside of the EMEA region for their NonStop Customers based in EMEA.

Contact us to see how we can assist you with highly skilled NonStop professionals, whether Long Term or Part Time on a 24*7 basis.

Availability Digest Discusses Tour Operator’s Use of NonStop to Optimize Look-to-Book Ratio

An international packaged-tour operator sought relief for a booking system overloaded with customer read-only queries. It selected an active/active architecture that processes queries with Windows and NonStop servers and books transactions on another NonStop system. The Availability Digest discusses the tour operator’s new asymmetric configuration and how the NonStop booking and query nodes can interchange roles to provide continuous availability and disaster tolerance. The system also is easily expandable by adding Windows query nodes when needed.

Also in the August Digest:

● Read the Editor’s Message to learn the “five-legged stool” fundamentals that must be met by any system for which availability is an issue.

● Our Product Review introduces the concept of configuration drift, a major cause of failover faults in active/passive systems. NonStop AutoSYNC, from Carr Scott Software, Inc., eliminates configuration drift by maintaining in synchronization the software configuration of the two systems.

● Choosing a Business Continuity Solution: Part 2 – Data Replication explores various replication technologies plus their strengths and weaknesses.

The Availability Digest offers one day and multi-day seminars on High Availability: Concepts and Practices. Seminars are given both onsite and online and are tailored to an organization’s specific needs. http://www.availabilitydigest.com/seminars.htm.

Published monthly, the Digest is free and lives at www.availabilitydigest.com. Please visit our Continuous Availability Forum on LinkedIn. We’re at 302 members and counting. Our most recent thread, A Single Pane of Glass,” asks Forum members for their thoughts on the current state of unified system management for large data centers.

Thank You, NTI, for Your Recent TANDsoft FileSync Sales

You have to love those distributors who successfully sell your products. TANDsoft wishes to thank Network Technologies International (NTI) for their recent sales of FileSync™, TANDsoft’s file synchronization and replication product. FileSync automatically monitors, replicates and synchronizes source files, program environments, application environments, configuration files, programs – anything non-database that needs to be kept current across the network. Use FileSync for disaster recovery, system migrations, upgrades, and backups.

NTI distributes FileSync as a companion to DRNet®, NTI’s family of data replication products for the NonStop platform.

FileSync works closely with all NonStop real-time data replication products to provide a comprehensive solution for maintaining duplicate system and application environments. Among FileSync’s rich features:

- Supports a wide variety of file types, including all Enscribe files, all OSS files, and NonStop SQL/MP and SQL/MX tables and partitions.

- FileSync’s powerful, unique wildcarding capabilities support multiple criteria by which to filter qualified fileset lists. The fewest commands possible are used. Simple wildcarding is also supported.

- Enables synchronization of operating environments with same node name (e.g., /prod to /prod) for system upgrades.

- Can be operated in History/Report mode to obtain a complete list of synchronized files or in Verify/Report mode for a list of out-of-sync files or files designated for purging.

- Synchronization can be scheduled or automatic. Your choice.

- Supports Expand and TCP/IP.

- FileSync Audit replicates only Enscribe file modifications, not entire Enscribe files, in order to efficiently synchronize all files across the network.

TANDsoft’s “best of breed, best in price” philosophy offers highly competitive value for all TANDsoft solutions. In addition to FileSync, they include the Enscribe-2-SQL and TMF-Audit Toolkits; the OPTA2000 virtual clock and time-zone simulator; AutoLib, which automatically loads a user library or a DLL for executing processes; and Command Stream Replicator, which automatically replicates FUP, SQL/MP and SQL/MX DDL structure and other environment changes to target systems – changes and settings that normally are not replicated because they sit outside the TMF Audit Trail. TANDsoft products require minimal or no application modifications and are available for all HP NonStop servers.

Our Enscribe to SQL Migration Forum on LinkedIn is at 70 members and counting. We encourage you to participate in our latest thread – “HP recently announced NonStop SQL/MX Release 3.0. Does this in any way help customers migrate from Enscribe to SQL?”

For more information about TANDsoft’s FileSync for automatic file synchronization and replication, contact Jack Di Giacomo at +1 (514) 695-2234. The company is headquartered in Beaconsfield, Quebec, Canada. UTC/GMT -4 (Eastern Daylight Time) www.tandsoft.com

Live webinar: Expert Advice - Improve HP NonStop Efficiencies Using Modernization & Virtualization

How to bring cross platform data together for a single view

Date:

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Time:

9:00 am - 10:00 am ET

2:00 pm - 3 pm BST

Vital for your success: Access to data locked away in the HP NonStop can be the difference between

generating or losing business. Learn more here!

Join us for this webinar to gain actionable insight from Richard Buckle, Pyalla Technologies, about the

benefits of data federation to access information stored in Enscribe files and NonStop SQL tables

and tips to bring cross platform data together for a single view of data.

Join us to learn about:
* How data federation eliminates barriers to data access
* Why a single view of data using virtualization is a priority
* Cost-saving tips to access Enscribe files and NonStop SQL
* And a lot more!

In addition, Richard Thomas, Attunity’s Director Technical Services, will discuss and demonstrate Attunity Connect and Attunity Federate,
enabling real-time access to this valuable information.

SOAP/AM Server, from NuWave Technologies, allows client applications running on virtually any platform to access your NonStop applications--securely. This means you can remotely access important data stored on the Tandem, without making expensive changes to existing applications. Not only that, but it only takes about 30 minutes to download and start modernizing with SOAP/AM®.

There are many ways to use SOAP/AM Server, including:

Your internal applications access Web services hosted on your NonStop Server
Your customers and business partners place orders, request price quotes, receive parts availability, etc.
Your NonStop team prepares for a zero-downtime migration to the BladeSystem Matrix or another platform

SOAP/AM® is the clear choice for NonStop connectivity for numerous reasons, but especially because it is so easy to install and use. The manager of information systems at Washington Federal Savings (and almost all users of the product) has high praise for SOAP/AM®:

"Modernizing the user interface of our NonStop applications has been very popular with our users. The ease of implementation has allowed us to focus on the business logic embedded in our NonStop applications, and made it easy to interact with third party service providers."

Download a trial and get started now, or

learn more at http://www.nuwave-tech.com/products/soap-am-server.

Musings on NonStop!

August, ‘11

The opinions expressed here are solely
those of the now self-employed author

The important milestone, from my perspective, has been the fourth anniversary of the blog site, Real Time View. This past weekend, I completed the first post of my fifth year and yet, it seems like I’ve been writing about NonStop for just a short time. It certainly doesn’t’ feel like four years.

Make sure you check out the latest post:

http://itug-connection.blogspot.com/2011/08/fourth-anniversary.html

While I am on this topic, however, one theme of my previous musing, crowds attracting crowds, describing the success LinkedIn is now enjoying across the NonStop community - with a lot of folks now members of multiple NonStop-associated groups - is that I am going to have to change my model when it comes to the promotion of posts to blogs and discussions started in LinkedIn. It would seem that with the scope of what I address, many of you are getting email status updates multiple times and often daily. Rather than having you assign me to junk folders or treat me as spam, I’m going to leave a smaller footprint on LinkedIn when “advertising” my blogs.

In the future, I will only promote new blog posts on the LinkedIn group, Real Time View, and to groups associated with user groups - mostly former RUGs, and those associated in some way with ACI, as there are a number of them as well. Vendor or theme groups will not see discussions any longer that simply advised of new posts. In this manner, I hope to be able to reduce the email updates many of you get.

However, if there are still issues or concerns arising from this promotional “model” then please email me directly at:

richard@pyalla-technologies.com

Before I leave this topic, I trust you all had the opportunity to check out the previous post on Real Time View. I called it “GuardianAngel? NonStop revels in Clouds!” and it can be viewed at:

http://itug-connection.blogspot.com/2011/08/guardianangel-nonstop-revels-in-clouds.html

The reason I mention this post is twofold:

Firstly, it covers some terrific work undertaken by the folks working in the field who remain very close to the NonStop customer base. What it does is exploit capabilities of the latest release of Pathway (TS/MP V2.4) and leverages experiences gained with what some in the community may have viewed as less-than-successful programs such as HSC(Hybrid Super Cluster) and NEO/LEO, and delivers a powerful capability for NonStop to manage Pathway serverclasses on platforms such as Linux and Windows.

“Pathway’s Serverclasses are instantiated on Linux (or Windows) under PATHMON control as-if they were local to NonStop,” was how HP’s Keith Moore explained it in a comment on the blog site (yes, when you read the post, make sure you tab down to the comments that have been posted). Moore then added “this allows TS/MP to manage creation/deletion, and recovery of business-level application services running on or off the NonStop platform. The value is in that NonStop is always-on and can reliably manage these services based upon performance queue metrics.”

For anyone who was at HP Discover in June and went to the Exhibition hall and saw the demos provided, or sat through the Friday presentation 3221 “NonStop and Linux architecture for scale and mission-critical computing” this may be old news, but for the rest of the NonStop community this is real and tangible evidence of how a future for NonStop may evolve where Cloud Computing will include NonStop!

Secondly, this post rapidly generated readership that within days pushed it into the list of top 10 of my posts for the period 2009 until now – a remarkable feat. It now site in sixth place and I suspect in time, it will climb even higher. Hundreds of readers have spent more than 3 minutes reading the posts again, a remarkable achievement given the little marketing work expended in support of the post.

Before I wrap up this month’s musings it would be remiss of me not to mention the announcements of only a few days ago. According to the press release of August 18, 2011, that can be found on HP’s web site, the company unveiled the “details of a plan to accelerate the strategy introduced in March. The plan introduced today will (a) move HP into higher value, higher margin growth categories; (b) sharpen HP's focus on its strategic priorities of cloud, solutions and software with an emphasis on enterprise, commercial and government markets; and (c) increase investment in innovation to drive differentiation.”

This was then followed by the announcement that was a surprise for many “as part of the transformation, HP announced that its board of directors has authorized the exploration of strategic alternatives for the company's Personal Systems Group.” It’s still a little early to comment further about this but in the next musing, I will certainly have more to add. Consumer sales are so different from corporate sales and I have to admit, I have been surprised that HP has been able to juggle the two demands for as long as it has – but for sure, any renewed focus on its strategic priorities has to be good for NonStop in the near term!

Until next month…

Following my blogs? My web publications? My discussion Groups?

Check out:

Real Time View at http://www.itug-connection.blogspot.com/

…. And check out the Group on LinkedIn, Real Time View

comForte Lounge at http://comfortelounge.blogspot.com/

…. And check out the Group on LinkedIn, comForte Lounge

Realtime.ir at http://realtime.ir.com/

…. And check out the Group on LinkedIn, realtime.ir

Buckle-Up at http://www.buckle-up-travel.blogspot.com/

…. And check out the SubGroup on LinkedIn, Pyalla Track Days

Richard Buckle

Founder and CEO

Pyalla Technologies, LLC

Email: richard@pyalla-technologies.com

Is Tandem In Your Future?

by Carol Flaig

I am a Tandem oldster. Lots of us are and that‘s a problem. The regal redundant Tandem has been a resident in my career for more than 20 years. As more AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) solicitations find their way to me, I have also been identified as a member of another ageing community. My age represents strategic risk for companies that rely on my Tandem skills and experience.

AARP might be perceived as a Groupon of sorts for old people. Tandem, a processor of sorts for old applications. Both might be perceived as overpriced and outdated. Neither has maintained their original business models and neither seem to offer a compelling new model that has their user communities buzzing.

I have been a Tandem user and I have been a Tandem vendor. It is here where I disclose I sell Tandem web to host connectivity solutions. In my position I acknowledge a serious discussion among users about the future of Tandem and its specific role in their individual corporate IT plans. It is not my intention to disparage the Tandem in any manner, simply to better understand the plans of the Tandem user community.

I have customers that have migrated away from their Tandem platforms altogether, and others planning to do the same. Specific reasons for this significant effort vary but do seem to generally fall into the following categories:

- No good new Tandem off the shelf applications available

- Total cost of ownership high

- Tandem support costly

- Strategic risk high

- Other open platforms are as reliable and more cost effective

- Other?

In my continuing research I would enjoy your feedback and input. I am looking for user stories of Tandem migration and would love to understand your future Tandem plans and strategy. I plan to compile and use your comments and experience to write a follow up article that includes individual examples of Tandem migration. Your experience may be a great contribution to another so all feedback is welcome.

Please send me your feedback and a quick note if you wish to participate in my un-scientific survey.

1.) Is a migration from the Tandem in your IT plan? If yes, why?

2.) Are you planning to include the Tandem in your long term IT business strategy? If yes, why?

The express opinions contained in this article are mine and mine alone.

I look forward to your feedback and input. I can be contacted at: cflaig@platypuspartners.com

“Future Time,” not “Real-Time” with Ban Bottlenecks®

Why “future time”?

1. System slowdowns or failures can cost thousands of dollars a minute.

2. Most problems can be predicted with the proper knowledge and discipline.

3. “Future time” performance analysis saves money and time.

How does Ban Bottlenecks do “Future Time”?

1. Understand and document historical demand, with an emphasis on peaks.

2. Understand and document historical service levels, with an emphasis on peaks.

3. Understand and document each component of system utilization as it relates to demand.

4. Stabilize and optimize the current system operation.

5. Create a program of Heinrich Ratio minimization, detecting and fixing current issues which could escalate.

6. Predict future peak demand and its impact on each system component.

7. Advise the client on future issues.

Ban Bottlenecks®:

Dedicated NonStop performance /capacity experts.

1440x730 coverage (every minute, every day, with a 2-year historical perspective).

Also Windows, Unix, and VOS. Cover your entire critical processing path.

Call for a free evaluation!

assist@banbottlenecks.com

1.415.256.8369

www.banbottlenecks.com

User Groups

Information on User Group events can be found at http://www.connect-community.org

BITUG

12th October Security SIG

29th Nov – 1st Dec HP Discovery, Vienna

7th Dec Education Day

8th Dec BIG SIG (including Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity)

www.bitug.com

GTUG, 21/22 Sept 2011 www.gtug.de

Discover, Las Vegas, June 6-10

VNUG, Stockholm, Sept 5-7, 2011

CTUG, Toronto, October

GTUG, Germany, Nov

Discover, Vienna, Nov 29 - 1 Dec

Where to Follow Tandemworld

Tandemworld have created a Group on LinkedIN through which you can view the latest Tandemworld eNewsletter.

We cuurently have a number of highly experienced NonStop Specialists seeking new roles within the EMEA region. Should you have a requirement for a short term specialist (Contract) or a more longer term resource (Permanent) please Contact Us to enable us to assist you swiftly.

Please view this at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2602432&trk=hb_side_g

And

Tandemworld within EMEA

+44 (0) 20 8304 7979

info@tandemworld.net

www.tandemworld.net

To place article(s) within our future eNewsletters please Email us.

For Future Sponsorship opportunities please Email us.

GreenHouse announces a new module for its browser based iWAMS product:

Cybercrime Costs Continue to Dramatically Rise

“Future Time,” not “Real-Time” with Ban Bottlenecks®

Ban Bottlenecks®:

Call for a free evaluation!