Tandemworld eNewsletter for Jan 2014

There’s been a lot of buzz, starting with NonStop Technical Boot Camp (TBC) last year, then through 2014, culminating with the HP Discover event currently being held in Barcelona, about the new x86-based NonStop server line. At the NonStop TBC last month we heard that the new line of servers would be called “HP Integrity NonStop X”, and just today we’ve seen confirmation from HP that these machines should be available in March of 2015. Exciting times indeed!

The introduction of the NonStop X range removes the last vestiges of proprietary NonStop hardware from the architecture, while maintaining the NonStop fundamentals (availability, scalability, fault tolerance) that we’ve come to expect from the platform. NonStop X will support Infiniband, which replaces ServerNet as the platform’s interconnect fabric. This move should see the platform’s costs continue to decrease, while taking advantage of the greatly increased throughput that Infiniband provides.

Musings on NonStop!

December, ‘14

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

My good friend and business colleague, Dave Finnie, brought with him to the NonStop Technical Boot Camp three jars of Vegemite. Dave was participating in a joint HP – InfraSoft presentation (more of which will follow shortly), but after telling him I had run out of Vegemite he was gracious and indeed quite generous with his gift. I owe you, Dave! At lunch today I cut off a slice from a rustique baguette, slapped on some butter and carefully dabbed on a portion of the slightly salty delicacy - priceless!

The holiday season is rapidly approaching and with it, as is the tradition, there will be a considerable amount of wonderful food. Not known to shy away from good food – if as yet you haven’t read the post to the WebAction blog, Coincidence; Surely Not. WebAction Intersects with NonStop to Give You a Better Steak! you may want to read - it is yet another post about good food and even better wine – sometimes it’s the simpler morsels that deliver the most joy. Especially after a lengthy period of being deprived of such a delight!

This month I posted on the topic of distractions and disruptions to the NonStop community blog, Real Time View. In that December 11, 2014, post HP makes headlines; NonStop message will distract the competition … I touched on the topic of just how many within the NonStop community had been feeling deprived, and for a very long time. It had nothing to do with food, but rather about NonStop making headlines once again. It was the recent 2014 HP Discover event in Barcelona that proved to be the catalyst, but it was cool to see as many references to NonStop as there were - sensational!

In particular, one press item I came across really intrigued me, not so much because of the heading but because of what followed. The article, That’s gotta hurt: HP to offer Xeon-based Superdome servers included the remark, “Hewlett-Packard is bending on its pro-Itanium stance and will offer Intel Xeon-based versions of its high-end Superdome and NonStop servers …” and the point is, when was the last time we saw both Superdome and NonStop servers referenced in the same sentence? With Superdome ruling at the top of the Unix roost, seeing NonStop as ascendant as it was in this case, with no reference to other servers in HP’s portfolio, was a turnaround of dramatic proportions.

The NonStop community already knew of the “halo product” status NonStop enjoys when it comes to mission-critical applications, but seeing it supported in writing brought every bit as much enjoyment to me as did my Vegemite sandwich. There’s a long row to hoe, as I am prone to observe of late, to see NonStop elevated to an even higher position but at the very least, we can acknowledge that a good start has been made after reading the articles that were published during 2014 HP Discover, Barcelona.

The NonStop community has proven to be slow to change through the years and for good reasons; NonStop folks are occupying critical positions overseeing the very transactions that keep a business running, change isn’t something openly embraced on a whim! However, the arrival of a complementary product family in support of NonStop – the new x86-based, NonStop X family complementing the Itanium-based, NonStop I family – is likely to create new business opportunities.

There’s still a couple of items HP has to get right concerning NonStop X but as daunting as the task may appear, NonStop is going to put considerable distance between itself and the many detractors that so openly promote the demise of NonStop. Sorry, but it isn’t going to happen. Not on my watch. After forty years I do not flinch when it comes to stating that another ten years is pretty easy to see while another fifteen years is highly probable.

One reason I am as bullish about NonStop continues to be the versatility of NonStop – adding databases, languages and chipsets haven’t broken NonStop’s stride in the past nor will it in the future. No matter what technology is thrown at NonStop, it finds a way to embrace it and to add value. Java and JVMs? XMP and SOAP? TCP/IP, LANs, Ethernet, HTTP … the list goes on. Adding a whole new platform, language, framework, utilities and services, as Dave Finnie and the rest of the team at InfraSoft has been doing of late – and yes, this month saw another major milestone passed (but look for a new post to Real Time View for more on that matter shortly) as Node.js support draws nearer. Ready for the mid-March, 2015, availability of NonStop – mindboggling!

What are college kids writing today – solutions in Java Script. So what is Node.js? From material used during this year’s NonStop Technical Boot Camp:

� Serverside Javascript for easily building fast, scalable network applications

� Node.js is event based, non-blocking I/O

� Uses V8 – Google’s Chrome Javascript runtime engine

� Currently runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux/Unix

� Platforms supported by V8 today – X86, ARM, MIPS and PowerPC (no Itanium!)

And what is the value of V8?

Javascript parser, compiler, and runtime support. NOT an interpreter
Understands, and optimises for, Javascript variable types – both for memory and CPU
V8 has two compilers:
- Simple “full” code generation compiler for rarely used code
- “Crankshaft” optimising compiler for code hotspots

What will likely “encourage” consideration by traditional NonStop users of the new NonStop X family are new programming models and applications and industry experts everywhere are predicting the pendulum swinging more swiftly towards Node.js – leading to comments such as this. “Node.js is the language of choice for high performance, low latency applications and has been powering everything from robots to API engines to cloud stacks to mobile web sites. Node.js is used by tens of thousands of organizations in over 200 countries and we see over 2 million downloads a month from the Nodejs.org web site.”

In an October 8, 2013, press release - Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2014 – it includes the observation, “Gartner predicts that through 2014, improved JavaScript performance will begin to push HTML5 and the browser as a mainstream enterprise application development environment.” The italics and bold type font are my emphasis on this observation but it’s worth the added attention all the same – and to think, it will be supported on the NonStop X as it rolls-out in March 2015!

After being deprived of positive marketing news about NonStop for so long and realizing that it will be a series of small “morsels” that brighten NonStop system’s destiny, I am looking forward to 2015 unfolding before us. Capitalizing on open software and commodity technology looked to be a long way off but now, it’s become so tantalizing close to reality. Just a few more months and on that, as we head into the New Year, all I can say is – wonderful!

Richard Buckle
Founder and CEO

Pyalla Technologies, LLC
Email: richard@pyalla-technologies.com

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

Check out (or copy and paste to your browser):

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

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

comForte at http://blog.comforte.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

WebAction.com at http://webaction.com/blog/

…. And check out the group on LinkedIn, Data Driven Apps

ATMmarketplace at
http://www.atmmarketplace.com/blogger.php?id=130763

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

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

OmniPayments Is First NonStop Partner to Take Delivery of a “NonStop X”

It’s on schedule for delivery by the end of the year. OmniPayments Inc. will be the first HP NonStop partner to take possession of the new NonStop X server. NonStop X runs in a 100% “standard hardware” HP x86 blade system, in which the individual blades communicate with each other via the high throughput, low latency Infiniband. In addition to its x86 architecture and standard hardware modules, NonStop X’s OSS (Open System Services) development and operating environment allows the platform to look like any other HP enterprise server except for its extraordinary NonStop fault-tolerant availability. NonStop X is expected to significantly exceed the performance capabilities of the current Itanium NonStop servers and their proprietary ServerNet fabric. Plus, other applications running on Linux and Windows now can be connected seamlessly to the NonStop environment. NonStop is now open.

For OmniPayments, the NonStop X acquisition enhances the company’s ability to provide a multi-platform solution for customers of its OmniPayments Financial Transaction Switch. The switch comprises a comprehensive architecture by which financial institutions acquire, encrypt, switch and authorize transactions across multiple input channels such as ATMs, POS terminals, kiosks, IVRs and the Internet. OmniPayments supplies a full set of functionalities to support payment transactions. Based on a modern Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), OmniPayments consists of several service modules, of which the critical payment components are built on the NonStop platform.

At the heart of OmniPayments is its Payment Engine, which supports ATMs, POS terminals, transaction authorization, stand-in authorization, settlement, and card management, among many other functions. OmniPayments is secure and uses tokenization to comply with PCI-DSS specifications. The use of tokenization eliminates the need to pass sensitive information in unencrypted form to different interfaces.

The Payment Engine runs on NonStop servers, as does the OmniAuth Preauthorization Engine, whose services remove a significant processing load from the issuing banks. OmniAuth enables transaction screening before financial authorization by the issuing bank is invoked. Preauthorization services are based on frequency of transactions and financial limits. Preauthorization rules can apply to individual cardholders, groups of cardholders, individual retailers, groups of retailers, or any other classification of transaction sources.

Other less critical OmniPayment modules, like the OmniOffender system monitor, the OmniDash business monitor, and the Big Data Customer Experience Hub run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (x86 RHEL). The Customer Experience Hub integrates with the Payments Engine and is implemented via a “party model” database, which finds commonality between many entries and factors them into more abstract database tables. This furnishes the power to fuse many products and customer services, including loyalty modules, customized bill payment modules, etc.

The OmniPayments monitors offer 24/7 real-time views of all OmniPayments functions. OmniOffender reports CPU resource, process, disk, and file utilization. OmniDash collects and displays all forms of transaction and message flow throughout the system. Any application running on NonStop can be interfaced and monitored by the OmniDash operations monitor.

In the past, the OmniPayments NonStop applications and the x86 RHEL applications ran on different blade systems. NonStop servers communicated over ServerNet, Linux applications communicated over Infiniband, and no intercommunication existed between the platforms. By placing the OmniPayments Financial Transaction Switch on the new NonStop X, OmniPayments will incorporate a NonStop X Payment Engine and the RHEL modules within the same cabinet. This will allow OmniPayments to significantly increase its transaction capacity and to speed up the Customer Experience Hub.

OmniPayments supplies complete security functions for every financial transaction that it handles, including encryption-at-rest and encryption-in-flight. It has successfully been implemented at many customer sites. Available around the clock, OmniPayments will survive any single fault, requires no downtime for maintenance or upgrades, and supports a range of disaster-recovery solutions. It is easily expandable to provide additional functionality when needed. Additionally, OmniPayments can manage multiple devices, can host application interfaces, and can interoperate with third-party products or other systems if required. OmniPayments is deployed on NonStop to ensure the highest availability.

The OmniPayments pricing model is based not on transaction volume but instead on a one-time software license. This results in huge savings.

OmniPayments is the product arm of Opsol Integrators Inc., a leading HP NonStop System Integrator for Telco and Financial Services. Founded in 1995, Opsol later established OmniPayments Inc. to focus additional development efforts on the OmniPayments solution. The purchase of the NonStop X is one more example of the company’s years-long commitment to leveraging the strengths of the NonStop platform.

For further information, visit www.omnipayments.com. Contact Yash Kapadia at +1 408-446-9274 or at yash@omnipayments.com.

The positioning is based on evaluation of Lusis Payments’ capabilities in providing software and services for the global retail payment industry to reduce risk and operation cost as well as help support an array of payment transactions. The annual list of companies is selected by a panel of experts and members of CIO Review’s editorial board to recognize and promote technology entrepreneurship

“Lusis Payments has been on our radar for some time for stirring a revolution in the HP technology space, and we are happy to showcase them this year due to their continuing excellence in delivering top-notch technology-driven solutions,” said Harvi Sachar, publisher and founder, CIO Review. “Lusis Payments’ solutions continued to break new ground within the past year, benefiting its customers around the globe, and we’re excited to have them featured on our top companies list.”

So, by now you must have a Social Media Manager responsible for monitoring the reputation of your organisation on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Wikipedia, etc? Of course you have! (*)

But do the hours that your Social Media Managers work, cover the rise in social media traffic that occurs over the weekend and holidays?

If there is no dedicated monitoring in place outside your normal working hours, then when do you discover the changing sentiment about your business and its profile? January 2nd is certainly too late!

At Insider Technologies we see this high volume of traffic as a danger zone. One retweet of a negative message can escalate very quickly.

ATM machines are used more frequently at the weekend and retail point of sale is busier out of hours, especially at this time of year.

It doesn't take more than 140 characters, or one really irate character to start a social media frenzy, as available case studies attest.

It is all well and good having your teams watch over your social media platforms and their activity in working hours, as a problem can then be spotted reasonably quickly. But what happens when activity escalates, where traffic rises considerably outside the standard working days of the week. Not only that, but our research shows that this pattern is repeated in every country we investigated.

Our Social Media Monitoring solution – ‘Sentra for Social Networks’ - ensures that your social media platforms are covered:

24 hours a day, 7 days a week - that's 365 days a year

Sentra takes No weekends, No holidays, No time off at all.

Insider Technologies Limited is ISO9001:2008 and TickITplus certified: TickITplus

Join XYPRO at these upcoming Events in 2014 & 2015

HP Business Critical Dialogue
December 18th-20th, 2014
Marriott Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
www.innug.org

SunTUG
March 6th, 2015
Tampa, Florida
www.connect-community.org

GTUG
April 27th-29th, 2015
Munich, Germany
www.gtug.de

PCI SSC North American
Community Meeting
September 29th-October 1st, 2015
Vancouver, British Columbia
ww.pcisecuritystandards.org

PCI SSC Asia Pacific
Community Meeting
October 14th-15th, 2015
Tokyo, Japan
ww.pcisecuritystandards.org

PCI SSC SSC European
Community Meeting
November 3rd-5th, 2015
Nice, France
ww.pcisecuritystandards.org

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