Tandemworld eNewsletter for February 2015
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Tandemworld eNewsletter
for February 2015
Contents
OmniPayments’ OmniCloudX and the NonStop X: Impressive - and affordable - Together
Significant new Service from HP/BrightStrand for NonStop users
Musings on NonStop! - February, ‘15
Availability Digest Asks, “Are You Prepared for the 2015 Leap Second?”
Gravic Publishes New Case Study on Internet Banking Fraud
CSP - “Securing your OSS Environment on HP Nonstop”.
HP’s Voltage acquisition great for XYGATE Data Protection
comForte - Welcome to 2015
XYPRO Welcomes an Already Exciting
2015!
by
Lisa Partridge CEO
comForte's Limited Edition 'HP NonStop for Dummies' Book!
Register for the GTUG "PanEuropean NonStop HotSpot 2015" - April 27-29, 2014 in Munich, Germany
Modernize a Legacy with XML Thunder
comForte at events near you in 2015
Lusis Payments Names Chris Black as Head of Sales EMEA
Conversion of TAL to C, C++ with support of ITP-PANORAMA
TANDsoft’s FileSync and OPTA2000 are ready for NonStop X
Third Data Corporation - Securing Data and Accelerated Applications
DataExpress continues to invest in support of industry standards
as it prepares for the arrival of NonStop X
OTUG
Current Subscribers 15007
OmniPayments’ OmniCloudX and the NonStop X: Impressive - and affordable - Together
It is the perfect blend of technologies. OmniPayments’ new NonStop X serves as the foundation for the company’s OmniCloudX, the next generation of the popular OmniPayments financial-transaction switch. Combining the blazing speed of the Intel x.86 chip, an open development environment, and NonStop’s fault-tolerant operating system ported to commodity blades, NonStop X hosts numerous instances of OmniPayments at a price so attractive that mid-size retailers now can enjoy the benefits of having their own high-capacity transaction switches.
OmniPayments offers a
comprehensive solution for retailers to acquire, authenticate, route, switch and authorize transactions across multiple input channels, e.g., ATMs, POS (point-of-sale) terminals, kiosks, IVR (interactive voice response) units, mobile devices, and the Internet. Based on a modern Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), OmniPayments and now OmniCloudX consist of several service components, of which the critical elements are built on NonStop.Most retailers that use Point-of-Sale (POS) terminals for payment-card transactions obtain their terminals from a bank or bank-associated company with which they maintain a merchant account. These entities operate financial-transaction switches that connect the POS terminals to the institutions that issue cards (Visa, American Express, Discover, MasterCard, etc.) in order that transactions can be approved or rejected. The transactions aren’t free. As a result, many large retailers have opted to purchase their own switches in order to avoid hefty transaction fees.
Mid-size retailers rarely can justify the cost and management of HP NonStop servers, a mainstay for financial-transaction switches. OmniCloudX addresses that challenge by delivering high-capacity, affordable OmniPayments switching services built on NonStop’s legendary mission-critical platform.
OmniCloudX is operated on a pay-for-use basis. Each OmniCloudX customer pays only for the amount of CPU resources, storage, and networking that it uses. OmniCloudX provides backup systems so that a system outage will be recoverable immediately by switching the retailer to another system in the cloud, perhaps even at a different physical location. OmniPayments, Inc. supplies all of the IT staff needed to manage the transaction switches running in its cloud. Also supplied are complete security functions for every transaction handled, including encryption-at-rest and encryption-in-flight. OmniCloudX 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.
OmniCloudX now has been configured to support the needs of “unbanked customers” – those individuals who do not use the services of banking institutions. Via their Tax IDs, Social Security numbers, National IDs, etc., unbanked customers can be paid wages by employers or receive government subsidies via the use of approved OmniCloudX Payment Centers.
Available around the clock, OmniCloudX 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, OmniCloudX can manage multiple devices, can host application interfaces, and can interoperate with third-party products or other systems if required. Like OmniPayments, OmniCloudX supports EMV smart-card technology.
OmniPayments is the product arm of Opsol Integrators Inc., a leading HP NonStop system integrator. Founded in 1995, Opsol later established OmniPayments, Inc. to focus additional development efforts on the OmniPayments solution. Those efforts now extend to the OmniCloudX
.For further information, visit www.omnipayments.com. Contact Yash Kapadia at +1 408-446-9274 or at yash@omnipayments.com.
Significant new Service from HP/BrightStrand for NonStop users
Is your NonStop Infrastructure secure and fit for purpose?
Hp, together with it’s Partner BrightStrand International are extremely pleased to offer this signficant new service to NonStop customers. It has been clear for some time that a complete service of this nature has been required and we are delighted, that after many months of taking customer feedback and subsequent planning, we are able to launch this new service.
Particularly in light of recent media coverage, there are many questions that are rightly being asked. No matter what market sector you are in, we know that your NonStop Infrastructure is crucial to your customers, your business and to your well-being as an organization.Have you ever asked yourselves any of the following questions, for example:
What happens if your system goes down?
Is your Infrastructure Secure?
Have you a viable Storage, Backup and Restore Strategy?
Are your Interfaces to Networks and Other Systems resilient?
Are Roles and Responsibilities and Interdependencies clearly defined?
Is training current and appropriate?
How do you approach Software releases and Updates?
The NonStop Infrastructure is crucial to your business and your customers.
We have all seen what happens if things go wrong and it can be hugely expensive and hugely embarrassing and lead to the loss of valuable customers. There is also the subject of heavily regulated environments and how you view/include/monitor the Social Media. The key is to ensure that your NonStop Infrastructure and the resources involved are operating in the most effective way and that there are also comprehensive, known, tested and current processes in place to try and avoid those unfortunate instances. This should also ensure that if and when these instances do occur, corrective actions are known and taken, to try and minimize system risk and outage.
Problems can and do of course occur but as we have also seen, how they are handled is as important to finding the root cause. It is vital now, perhaps more than ever with the media capabilities these days that organizations are seen to be operating as effectively as they possibly can be. We also know that the resources who work in these environments, want to know that too.
NonStop SDI Service offering
HP are taking this seriously and together with their Partner BrightStrand International would like to propose that nominated resources from your organization attend an initial 1 day workshop (only for your organization), for the purpose of discussing the main areas of interest for you. The above list is by no means meant to be exhaustive and there will almost certainly be areas of specific interest to you that should be covered.
Clearly, the attendees of this initial workshop are very important and will need to be agreed with you beforehand, as they will also need to be present to gain the most effective output. Also, the receivers of this output will need to be agreed with you.
The output from this workshop will be a document outlining the specific Service to be delivered to your organization which will address all of the main issues identified in your workshop. A customized Professional Service to cover each issue in great detail, to ensure that from the perspective of both the technical and people resources involved, your organization will be much better prepared to hopefully prevent future issues where possible but also very importantly, to deal with them as effectively as possible when they do occur.
Following this workshop, there would be no obligation for you to accept the specific service being proposed to move forward with but we would hope that you will be able to see the huge benefits in doing so. During this Service delivery process, we will hopefully find areas where things are indeed already being done extremely well within your organization and we will report on that. Either way, the key is you now have a way of ensuring that your organization, at least from a NonStop perspective is “Fit for purpose”, which we hope will provide you with peace of mind.
David McLeod, the Director of NonStop for EMEA says:
“Recent requirements for continuous availability, often from regulatory authorities, have caused many customers to review the practices employed in support of the HP NonStop to ensure that not just the computer but the whole environment is capable of supporting these augmented demands. This offering is geared to all customers requiring the highest levels of availability.”
Alan Mushett, MD of BrightStrand International Ltd says:
“We are delighted to be working with HP on this very significant service. Over many months, a lot of input has been taken from customers and experienced NonStop people, which has enabled us to put together this complete NonStop infrastructure service. It was clear that customers wanted a complete service of this nature, in order for them to ensure that all areas of their NonStop business, both system and resources were covered to ensure that for the future they were prepared and ‘Fit for Purpose’.
For further details and questions please contact your HP NonStop Sales representative.
Alternatively contact emeasales@brightstrand.com.
Musings on NonStop!
February, ‘15
The
opinions expressed here are solely
those of the now self-employed author
Just recently I began a client email update with how providing opinions and commentaries, as well as blog posts, are both my profession and a labor of love. This is not lost on anyone in the NonStop community as the constant stream of comments and posts to blog sites and LinkedIn groups confirms – there remains a very strong interest in all things NonStop related. Only a short time ago I wondered out loud why I hadn’t taken up this career much earlier, only to be told that I have been providing articles and features to newspapers and magazines since the mid-1980s and perhaps I should be less concerned about missed opportunities of the past and perhaps more focused on what is to come…
In last month’s Musings I wrote of how seeking direction is important to anyone in IT as the downside from mistakes become all too visible all too quickly. What I should have also mentioned at that time is that it’s not only the direction we chose to take that is important, but also whom we elect to take along for the ride. More so today than ever before, partnerships are critical to generating positive outcomes for any business pursuit. Picking the right partner has never been more important and choosing a partner that has a reputation and a sound delivery track record may not be as wise a choice as it was just a short time ago.
For the NonStop community selecting NonStop isn’t a choice that comes with much baggage, but on the other hand, there’s a lot to be gained from really taking a closer look at what we have running on that chosen NonStop system. Perhaps not quite the baggage found on other systems, but I suspect there are a few things we could do to bring NonStop out of the 1990s. As with many other predictions, the death of NonStop continues to be overstated, indeed exaggerated, and yet, rarely a post is made without some comments being given about NonStop that look backwards rather than forwards.
“My suspicion is that in a world where we are constantly chatting and twitting, very little is actually being said … Indeed, these days I find the only people who write good letters are the old or those living in refugee camps or in prison,” said Andrew Lam, author and editor, New America Media, in the post The Lost Art of Letter Writing. “For the rest of us in this age of mobility and information, there simply isn't any time for such a thing as a long, flowing, hand-written letter. In a similar vein, in the post by Maria Popova, The Humane Art: Virginia Woolf on What Killed Letter Writing and Why We Ought to Keep It Alive, opens with the observation that, “A letter should be regarded not merely as a medium for the communication of intelligence,” advised an 1876 guide to the art of epistolary etiquette, “but also as a work of art.”
In the post Files are still with us … to the DataExpress blog, I commented about “the death of files”, originating, as I pointed out, from comments made by Google executives when comparing Google Apps with Microsoft Office. When asked about the death of files and whether, like letter writing, has “this age of mobility and information” helped push the presence of files close to the precipice, “a file is a file is a file,” came the response from DataExpress CEO, Billy Whittington. For DataExpress, in the business of securely managing the movement of files, there’s very little evidence of files going away any time soon. “It may contain numeric or alphabetic data, it may be a media content file or even an object code component – yet if you look at it from the top down, it is still a file contained within a folder (or dare I say ‘dataset’)!”
A reoccurring theme in posts I have made to the ATMmarketplace blog has been “cash being king”. Contrary to the pundits, all crying out that cash is quite literally dead – simply too expensive an item to store, distribute and collect – I happen to think that the news about the death of cash has been overly exaggerated. Indeed, nothing could be further from the truth in some economies, and when you consider the vulnerability to theft by hackers, having funds in electronic form may not be as wise a move as it was once considered.
The death of letter-writing, the death of files, and the death of cash all seem to be reflex responses to a rapidly changing information world, where the ease of connectivity, the ubiquity of mobile devices and the emergence of a virtual world throwing it’s blanket over everything we could imagine, further highlights how volatile the world of IT has become. But should we also include the dearth of new applications on NonStop into this mix as well? Is the ever-increasing popularity of App development detracting from what is needed on enterprise servers such as NonStop or is the enterprise now fully served by all the applications they will ever need?
A recent comment, made in passing, pulled me up in my tracks. Stated as a fact, the comment proposed that, as of today, the enterprise has all the applications it needs to prosper in business. There’s no longer a situation where empty box outlines, describing functionality needed by the business, remain unfilled waiting, as it were, for a new product to appear on the horizon. Could this possibly be true? Have all the applications been written? And just as importantly, is the science, or indeed art of large-scale application-writing, heading for the trash can? Will we all be witnesses to the death of the development of further enterprise applications?
There will be exceptions, of course, but in general a strong case can be made favoring enhancing what we now have versus looking for what is new. As much as this may sound sacrilegious to the IT faithful, the dawn of the mini-application or simply, Apps, is hitting the enterprise and making large enterprise projects that most of us are familiar with, looking oh, so 1990s. Again, “in this age of mobility and information” the core of what we need to do as a business has been done, for the most part, leaving the tweaking of processing and presentation to better serve customers on the move – yes, the always-on world is forcing a modernization of our applications like we haven’t seen well, since client/server computing, and yes perhaps since the first distributed computer came onto the scene.
And the timing could not be more critical as a new generation of programmers talking in Python, Perl, Ruby and JavaScript. Yes, like letter-writing and large-scale enterprise application development, C, C++ and Java are yes, you guessed it, so 1990s. NonStop systems need to find ways to support this new generation of developers even as the age of mobility and information blossom further. It most likely will include hybrid configurations as it will likely extend to include the introduction of new platforms to NonStop. It’s exciting – have you seen how many times technologies like JSON, REST, Node.js have been presented to the NonStop community of late? MongoDB, Crouchbase, etc. as part of the move to NoSQL have also begun to be talked about, not as a gee-whiz, nice to have, but rather, how soon will it be before they appear?
The arrival of NonStop X will open the doors to all of this, and much more. Yes, as much as we feared the death of Tandem and NonStop, the good news is long live NonStop X! I cannot say without reservation that there will be no more enterprise applications developed, even as I cannot confirm that something new will indeed appear on the horizon. However, what I am certain about is that with NonStop X modernization takes on a whole new appearance whereby complementary technologies come to the fore. Partnerships will be important, as will be embracing new programming models and even database technologies – can’t you just feel the excitement all this foretells?
The post by Maria Popova, referenced earlier in this month’s Musings, has as its subtitle, “A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living”, surely resonates with everyone in the NonStop community, as a NonStop system that goes on changing is bound to be around to celebrate further major anniversaries!
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
Availability Digest Asks, “Are You Prepared for the 2015 Leap Second?”
The
Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing. To account for this, a leap
second occasionally is added to our clocks to synchronize our time with
a solar day. The next leap second is scheduled for June 30, 2015, at
23:59:60 UTC. The last leap second occurred on June 30, 2012. It caused
many systems to crash, especially those running Linux and Java. Prior to
2012, a leap second was added in 2005. The leap second before that was
added in 1998.
Many applications now in operation were implemented by programmers who
never heard of a leap second and who made no compensations for it during
application development Thus, the leap second’s erratic and infrequent
occurrence makes it likely that many systems were not built to account
for it. In 2012, services such as Foursquare, Reddit, Linkedln, and Yelp
were impacted. All, by the way, ran Linux.
“2015 – The Year of the Leap Second,” introduces the concept of this
irregular time adjustment, the history of the leap second, potential
issues, and the workarounds now being planned for this coming June. In
addition to our leap second commentary, read the following articles in
the Availability Digest’s February 2015 issue (http://availabilitydigest.com/digests/v10_i02/1002_digest.htm).
Verizon Cloud Down for Forty Hours - Verizon’s recently conducted
40-hour scheduled downtime of its cloud services annoyed many of its
enterprise customers. However, Verizon deliberately risked temporary
customer wrath in order to upgrade its capacity to make seamless
software and firmware upgrades in the future. No more planned downtime,
no need to reboot active virtual machines. That was Verizon’s goal.
Windows 7 Mainstream Support Ends – Shades of Windows XP. Extended
support for Windows XP ended on April 18, 2014. Most users upgraded to
Windows 7 rather than to the very unpopular Windows 8. Now on January
15, 2015, Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows 7, which powers
over 50% of PCs worldwide. No new features, no new product tweaks.
What’s new on the horizon? Windows 10, and it will be free to Windows 7
users later this year.
“Reliability and Availability of Cloud Computing” – (John Wiley & Sons,
2012) Authors Eric Bauer and Randee Adams analyze the factors
contributing to cloud downtime and recommend steps to achieve cloud
uptimes of five 9s.
@availabilitydig – The Twitter Feed of Outages - This article highlights
some of the @availabilitydig tweets that made headlines in recent days.
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. We also
offer technical and marketing writing services as well as consulting
services.
Published monthly, the Digest is free and lives at
www.availabilitydigest.com. Please visit our Continuous Availability
Forum on LinkedIn. We’re at 678 members and counting. Our latest – and
very lively - discussion was “Will the 2015 Leap Second Bite You?”
Follow us as well on Twitter @availabilitydig.
Gravic Publishes New Case Study on Internet Banking Fraud
Gravic recently published a new case study: Winning the Battle Against Internet Banking Fraud by Leveraging Real-Time Data Integration. A European bank needed to design and implement its internet banking application in a very specific way: to detect and prevent fraud, yet still enable the authorities to pursue a conviction against the actual actions committed. This case study provides a powerful demonstration of what can be achieved by clever application design, coupled with a Shadowbase high-speed/high-throughput heterogeneous data distribution fabric, to deliver large amounts of data in real-time to a data analytics engine. The integrated applications are used to prevent internet banking fraud, and have resulted in a significant decrease in the cost of such fraud to the bank, and allowed for prosecution of the perpetrators. The result is a real-time fraud detection and prevention system which provides critical functionality and produces tangible positive results for the bank.
New HP Article on Data Replication Product Suite for HP Integrity NonStop Servers
Gravic would like to point out a new article from HP (running in the upcoming March/April issue of the The Connection) on HP’s business continuity solutions: The Data Replication Product Suite for HP Integrity NonStop Servers – Guarding Your Applications, Your Data, and Protecting Your Business. Modern business continuity solutions keep business applications and customer services available, day and night, by design. Any application down time, whether planned or unplanned, must be minimal and invisible to customers – without loss of service or data. Only HP Integrity NonStop servers are designed, from the ground up, for continuous application availability – from their native fault-tolerant system architecture, to a complete set of integrated and disaster-tolerant business continuity software solutions.
The HP NonStop data replication solution suite comprises seven key software products which create and protect copies of critical databases and other essential application files across multiple systems, ensuring continued application service availability in the event of planned or unplanned system outage:
• HP NonStop Transaction Management Facility (TMF)
• HP NonStop Remote Database Facility (RDF)
• HP NonStop Shadowbase
• HP NonStop AutoTMF
• HP NonStop AutoSYNC
• HP NonStop SQL Data Definition Language Replicator (SDR)
• HP NonStop TS/MP (Pathway Domains)
HP specialists work with customers to plan the optimal combination and use of these products to meet a specific environment’s needs, followed by quick installation and configuration. Business continuity and availability products and services for Integrity NonStop servers provide the highest level of protection for mission-critical data, applications, and customer services.
To speak with us about your data replication and data integration needs, please visit us at www.gravic.com/shadowbase or at any of the shows listed below, email us at SBProductManagement@gravic.com, or call us at +1.610.647.6250.
Please Visit Gravic at these Upcoming Events
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SunTUG Sunshine Summit Tampa, FL, 6 March, 2015 |
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MRTUG Meeting Chicago, 31, March, 2015 |
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OTUG Meeting Columbus, OH, 1 April , 2015 |
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GTUG Conference Munich, Germany, 27-29 April, 2015 |
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MENUG Meeting Dubai, 4 May, 2015 |
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SATUG Conference Rivonia, South Africa, 7-8 May, 2015 |
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HP Discover Las Vegas, NV, 2-4 June, 2015 |
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Please Visit Gravic at these Sites
CSP - “Securing your OSS Environment on HP Nonstop”.
CSP would like to thank the many people who attended our recent online seminar series “Securing your OSS Environment on HP Nonstop”. We were pleased to share - and learn – about how applications like IBM MQ, iTP Webserver etc., should be properly secured in the OSS environment.
If you missed out and would like to find out more about CSP and OSS security, visit our website at www.cspsecurity.com.
And if you are going to be at SUNTUG (http://www.connect-community.org/events/event_details.asp?id=460806) or GTUG (www.gtug.de), make sure to drop by and see us at our booth.
HP’s Voltage acquisition great for XYGATE Data Protection
XYPRO, as a long time partner of both Voltage and HP, sees the acquisition as a great fit. XYPRO already works with Voltage Security to optimize SecureData for the HP NonStop platform, and provides a range of capabilities to quickly and easily implement on HP NonStop. With XYGATE Data Protection (XDP) customers can take advantage of SecureData’s range of data protection options, including Format Preserving Encryption (FPE) and Secure Stateless Tokenization (SST) with no changes to NonStop applications or their databases. XDP adds the following critical NonStop-specific capabilities:
- Support for both Native (code 800) and non-Native (code 100) applications
- Support for applications written in any HP NonStop-supported language
- Nowaited/non-blocking encryption calls
- Built-in access control and auditing, as with all XYGATE products
- Intercept library for environments where the customer’s application cannot be changed
- Simple SDK for environments where full application control is preferred
- Integration with a full range of Voltage SecureData APIs, allowing for all data types to be easily protected
- Support for all NonStop databases – Enscribe, SQL/MP and SQL/MX
The XDP solution fully supports Voltage’s approach to data centric security, allowing for data to be protected right across the enterprise, from the point of acquisition of the sensitive data, through the HP NonStop, and on to whatever other platforms and applications need that data.
For more information about XYGATE Data Protection click here.
XYPRO extends congratulations to both Voltage and HP. We look forward to continuing our strong partnership with these two great companies.
Andrew Price
VP Technology
XYPRO Technology Corporation
comForte - Welcome to 2015
You may have seen this blog post already as it is accessible from HPs mission critical blog site where Karen Copeland wrote a post about the
HP NonStop partnership world. In case you missed it, here is comForte's contribution to the blog.
The new year has come around quickly—and it’s hard to believe January is almost over. We at comForte hope that you have had a great start to the year.
2014 ended with significant announcements, most notably about the upcoming release of the HP NonStop X system—an extension to the NonStop family that will co-exist with Itanium-based x86 systems. One of the most important features of the new system is its move to Infiniband (Itanium servers will stay with ServerNet) which is the industry standard switch. General availability of the new NonStop X is scheduled for the first half of 2015 and we are eager to get a first-hand look its capabilities and features in the flesh.
Read the full blog at http://blog.comforte.com/?p=414
XYPRO Welcomes an Already Exciting
2015!
by
Lisa Partridge CEO
2014 was an eventful year for XYPRO.
It was a year of changes in leadership and infrastructure improvements
driven by our belief that our customers’ requirements and experience are
at the center of everything we do. The management buy-out announced at
the end of April was a significant moment in XYPRO’s evolution and
generated lots of energy and excitement on our team. As a pioneer in the
HP NonStop server space since 1983, and as specialists in mission
critical security since 1990, XYPRO is strongly positioned to continue
to innovate and grow with HP, the industry and our customers.
We are particularly thrilled to be extending the security capabilities
of the flagship XYGATE suite of security and encryption solutions to the
new HP NonStop X platform. We partnered with HP to port and test the
XYGATE software that is part of the NonStop Security Bundle shipped on
the new platform, as well as the entire XYGATE suite. XYGATE is ready
for generation NonStop X!
Continue reading....
comForte's Limited Edition 'HP NonStop for Dummies' Book!
This book is for anyone with an interest in HP NonStop systems. This book is for you if you're new to the platform, have spent many years working with it, if you manage people or IT systems, or if you're a system operator or developer on/for the HP NonStop platform.
Get the book and …
· Learn more about HP NonStop systems - a lot has changed in the past few years
· Find out why the platform is unmatched in the areas of high availability and linear scalability - all out of the box
· Discover how to develop new applications on the platform and how to modernize existing ones - all using modern and standard technologies
· Explore ways to better integrate your HP NonStop systems in the Enterprise IT infrastructure
If you would like to receive a free copy of the 'HP NonStop for Dummies' book please register at … http://www.comforte.com/ns4dummies
Register for the GTUG "PanEuropean NonStop HotSpot 2015" - April 27-29, 2014 in Munich, Germany
The “European NonStop HotSpot - Conference & Exhibition” is hosted by GTUG and Connect Germany for the fifth time. Based on the great success of the past conferences we changed the frequency of the event from every two years to an annual event.
This is your chance to meet your fellow NonStop users and to discuss your requirements with HP Executives onsite. In addition, you have the opportunity to get first-hand information and to learn about the latest strategic and technical developments on NonStop from users, HP and partners - now even more up-to-date! The latest developments on HP NonStop X (x86) will be a major focus and updates from HP, vendors and users are high up on the agenda.
…. enjoy the comfortable conference facilities at the Munich Marriott Hotel, located between the Olympic Park and downtown Munich, close to “Englischer Garten” and the lively quarter “Schwabing”.
…. discover Munich, home of the famous Oktoberfest, BMW and the Deutsches Museum and get a taset of the Bavarian Life Style - an inspiring symbiosis of traditional “Beer Gardens”, historical monuments, elegant shopping boulevards, cultural highlights and a very dynamic and innovative economy.
Conference language is English.
For more information and registration please go to …
NonStop HotSpot 2015.
If you are a vendor and would like to sponsor or exhibit at the event, but have not yet registered please check out the
vendor details and register. But please note that there are only a few more spots available. The Platinum Sponsorship is sold out.
Modernize a Legacy with XML Thunder
For most NonStop users whose applications are written in COBOL, moving to XML, the standard for business-to-business data exchange, or JSON, the prevalent data exchange standard for RESTful web services, can be daunting.
Canam Software Labs offers a solution to take legacy applications into the modern XML/JSON-powered world easily – XML Thunder for NonStop.
Designed to address the specific challenges of working with XML and JSON in legacy applications, XML Thunder uses a visual development approach and automatic code generation to put power in the hands of software developers to create a mapping of program fields to XML nodes. This mapping – called a Handler Design – is then used to generate all of the COBOL or C source code needed to read or write XML or JSON.
It’s just that simple.
The code is generated as a callable program module that can be used in new or existing COBOL or C applications. There are no additional runtimes required! And, there is no rewriting, which minimizes the time investment and the risk of error.
XML Thunder’s benefits include:
· Faster time to market – modernize applications to read and write XML/JSON in hours, not days, weeks or even months.
· Respond to changes quickly – implement new schema versions with minimal effort.
· Keep focus on the business logic in your programs – not the complexities of XML/JSON.
· Architecture independent solution - handlers work anywhere in your COBOL and C applications (web services, clients, servers, batch, etc.).
· High performing solution – with native complied code, no generic parsers employed.
· Process messages of any size
· Integrates easily with existing applications
· Supports COBOL-85, Native Mode COBOL and C
· Application can remain in Guardian
With a solution this simple, why would you want to handwrite your own code or employ a generic parser?
For more
information about how you can work smarter to modernize your legacy
applications for XML and JSON, visit
http://www.canamsoftware.com
or call (905) 712-3840.
comForte at events near you in 2015
The Event Calendar is filling up quite quickly. Join us at these events:
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SUNTUG |
6-7 March 2015 |
Florida, USA |
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PCI Dubai |
18 March 2015 |
Dubai, UAE |
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PCI Forum Dubai |
19 March 2015 |
Dubai, UAE |
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DUST |
24 March 2015 |
Phoenix, AZ, USA |
|
Int'l GTUG |
27-29 April 2015 |
Munich, Germany |
|
MENUG |
4 May 2015 |
Dubai, UAE |
|
HP Discover |
2-4 June 2015 |
Las Vegas, USA |
|
PCI Community Meeting, North America |
29 Sept - 1 Oct 2015 |
Vancouver, Canada |
|
The Payment Knowledge Forum 2015 |
5-6 Oct 2015 |
London, UK |
|
PCI Community Meeting, Asia Pacific |
14-15 Oct 2015 |
Tokyo, Japan |
|
PCI Community Meeting, Europe |
3-5 Nov 2015 |
Nice, France |
|
Connect NonStop TBC |
15-18 Nov 2015 (tent.) |
San Jose, CA, USA |
And there is more, join the security discussion in the HP NonStop [Tandem] Security Group on LinkedIn.
Last but not least, follow us on ...
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Lusis Payments Names Chris Black as Head of Sales EMEA
(PARIS, February 2015) — Lusis Payments, a specialist provider of mission-critical payments solutions, is pleased to announce Mr. Chris Black as the organization’s new Head of Sales for EMEA. Mr. Black is responsible for client management with regards to the company’s TANGO payments software and services and will also coordinate all aspects of new client acquisition for the region.
With over 25 years in the payments industry, Chris brings significant experience from his prior endeavors. Chris was a member of the original Barclaycard programme that pioneered the UK's first electronic point-of-sale service, PDQ. He Spent 7 years in the IT industry implementing major projects and supporting one of the largest on-line transaction processing systems in the world. His experience also includes senior sales careers within the financial sector with ACI Worldwide Inc., Nomad Software, Tieto, PayX, Infraxis and others.
“Chris brings tremendous industry experience and has developed expert product knowledge. His expertise will greatly enhance our clients’ profitability,” said Brian Miller, VP & GM Global, at Lusis Payments.
Chris’s insight is valuable to the team and commented: “I am pleased to be able to contribute to the growth of such a forward thinking organisation that has a great record for innovation as well as delivery”.
If you would like to discuss how he or any member of the Lusis sales and customer success team can assist you, please don’t hesitate to contact him.
Chris Black
Head of Sales, EMEA
Lusis Payments
Tel: +44 7990 831061
Conversion of TAL to C, C++ with support of ITP-PANORAMA
Saving the investment in applications that are written in TAL (TANDEM Application Language) is the goal of many NonStop users.
It has been pretty late in the life-span of TAL as a programming language, as ITP decided to write a TAL scanner that can make applications transparent and easy to understand. Because there are not so many developers around who can master TAL, it helps that the meta-data that ITP-PANORAMA is showing, makes it easier for developers to detect how the business processes are supported by the software. This understanding is mandatory for further use of TAL applications and also for re-writing in another, more modern language.
As a next step ITP developed ideas how ITP-PANORAMA can support the conversion of TAL programs into C and C++. In case this is of interest for your company, we are happy to send you a document that will give developers a guideline they can follow. Scanning both, the legacy TAL and the new designed C, C++ applications in two separate HyperCube repositories allows developers to switch between the two with a mouse-click to compare how a program looks in the old and new version.
For more information contact Juergen Overhoff jo@itp-panorama.com
TANDsoft’s FileSync
and OPTA2000 are ready for NonStop X
FileSync and OPTA2000 are TANDsoft, Inc.’s popular flagship products and
represent TANDsoft’s expertise in interception technology and file
synchronization. These products are proven solutions, installed
Worldwide, price-competitive and require no source code changes.
OPTA2000 provides date & time and time zone simulation for HP NonStop
applications (Guardian, OSS, third-party) and data bases (Enscribe,
SQL/MP, SQL/MX). Date & time simulation allows organizations to "time
travel" their applications in the future or past to test all date & time
sensitive logic. OPTA2000 eliminates the need to change system clocks
for time-sensitive testing. Time zone simulation allows applications to
operate in any virtual time zone. With the ongoing consolidation of data
centers, OPTA2000 becomes increasingly valuable by allowing applications
and users to operate in local date and time, independent of the current
physical location or time zone of their data center. HP customers have
relied on OPTA2000 Clock and Time Zone simulation for over 15 years.
FileSync automatically monitors, replicates and synchronizes source
files, program and application environments, configuration files,
programs – anything non-database that needs to be kept current across
the network. It supports qualified expressions and the synchronization
of SQL/MX Tables. In addition, FileSync supports all Guardian files –
audited, unaudited, structured and unstructured; all OSS files; NonStop
SQL/MP Tables; program source and object files; and configuration and
TACL files. Use FileSync for system migrations, disaster recovery,
upgrades, and backups. It works closely with NonStop real-time data
replication products to provide a comprehensive solution for maintaining
duplicate system and application environments. HP customers have relied
on FileSync for over 10 years.
FileSync Data Deduplication significantly reduces bandwidth requirements
and the size of backups by streaming to the backup database only changed
data, not entire files.
FileSync Incremental minimizes the time by synchronizing only files that
have changed or are new since the last incremental synchronization.
Filesync AppendOnly works with very large, unaudited files that must be
synchronized every few minutes. Changes made to a file are “appended” to
the end of the file. When AppendOnly checks for changes since the last
synchronization, it needs only to look at the end of the last changed
data update.
TANDsoft solutions also include the OPTA suite of interception and trace
utilities (OPTA-¬Trace Online Process Tracer and Analyzer, Recycle Bin,
EMS Alerts Online Startup and Termination Capture Utility, Low Pin
Optimizer); Stack Monitor, which alerts developers to the impending
threat of a stack overflow; Command Stream Replicator, which logs and
automatically replicates TMF-audited/unaudited FUP, SQL/MP and SQL/MX
DDL structure and other environment changes to target systems; AutoLib,
which automatically loads a user library or a DLL for executing
processes; the Enscribe-2-SQL and TMF-Audit Toolkits and the
Enscribe-2-SQL Data Replicator, all of which offer flexible, affordable
alternatives to more expensive conversion products or manual conversion
techniques; E2S-Lite, which permits efficient, low-cost Enscribe
modifications without the need to change a program’s source code; and
SDI/LOG (Sensitive Data Intercept), which logs Sensitive Data access to
Enscribe files and SQL/MP tables.
Free trials are available for all TANDsoft products. Visit
www.tandsoft.com,
or contact Jack Di Giacomo at +1 (514) 695-2234.
Third Data Corporation - Securing Data and Accelerated Applications
888-301-2431 / sales@thirddata.com
Third Data Corporation provides numerous products which can reside on HP Nonstop and other HP hardware platforms. In addition we provide custom high performance software design and development for our clients. Don't forget to download the latest version of Sysbusy. It's FREE at www.thirddata.com/dwnlds.html
Securing Data in Flight
NxSSL – NxSSL is an SSL proxy which may be used to provide SSL encryption and authentication services to TCP/IP connections. It provides full support for certificates and multiple encryption standards. It has been carefully tuned to provide the highest performance available for any NonStop SSL connection.
NxWeb – A high performance web server which provides support for NxLib applications. It also can be used without NxLib. It provides for secure connections, virtual domains, full http support and interfaces to pathway and IPC communications.
Securing Data at Rest
SecureStore – If you are security conscience trying to become compliant (PCI, HIPAA, etc) then you know that you can not leave sensitive data readily viewable. SecureStore does three things for you. The data is encrypted so that you can become compliant. The data is compressed so that your hardware costs are reduced. As part of disaster recovery your data is sent to multiple locations so it will be available when you need it. As a bonus for those having trouble with Guardian 4K limits there is no record size. It supports Big Data with up to 18 Exabytes. It can also integrate with SQL systems (SQL MX/MP, Oracle, Postgres etc).
NxFile+ – NxFile+ provides compression and encryption to Enscribe structured files. The files are configured through an XML interface and the results are provided seamlessly to your applications, typically without any code changes. In addition this provides for dynamic key changes on the fly so data stored at-rest may have its encryption keys changed as required. Because the records can be compressed prior to encryption, it’s also possible to have records which significantly exceed the current record size limitations.
Accelerated Development of High-Speed Applications
NxLib – NxLib provides a platform and utility libraries for developing a high performance multi-threaded applications on NonStop Guardian. The platform provides threading, queuing and network capabilities. This enables development of an application written single threaded style to perform as multi-threaded. Extensible command processing and help are supported. Development time can be cut to a fraction of the time it would normally take. This results in fast application development with consistent look and feel across multiple projects.
FastBuild Switch – When building a switch be it ATM-POS, Wire Transfer, EFT, Medical, or any other type of data that needs to get from one place to another, you are usually faced with three choices. Take an existing package and modify your system to match it. Get the vendor to “enhance” their system to meet your needs. Write a new system from scratch. The FastBuild Switch integrates with your existing system, or if you are building from scratch gives you a great start. The switch is also built around the latest HP technology to maximize performance. It integrates several of our other products to maximize cost savings and security in a fault tolerant manner. In a cross platform environment it also runs on other non-Guardian HP supplied platforms
DataExpress continues to invest in support of industry
standards
as it prepares for the arrival of NonStop X
Whereas last month we raised the
topic of security, this month, it’s about what many vendors are
discussing as well – leveraging our knowledge of
NonStop in the work we do for other platforms. While many vendors
can provide their users with server clusters, when it comes to true
availability these users are left to develop scripts, insert APIs into
their applications, and rely on external services like data replication
to achieve the levels of availability anywhere close to what comes out
of the box for NonStop users. This can be a disruptive approach, where
the invasiveness can itself lead to further problems, with few users
prepared to do the routine take downs to ensure everything goes to plan.
In an upcoming column for The Connection, Pyalla Technology’s CEO,
Richard Buckle, wrote of how he wasn’t suggesting “that the LUW package
itself can be made fault tolerant, but rather, there’s structural
changes to the underpinning infrastructure and framework that can be
made by those with a working knowledge of NonStop that improves the
availability of their applications on LUW systems.” Furthermore, said
Buckle, for NonStop vendors to take these steps, it “is a wise business
decision for them to take (as) I would rather have a healthy population
of vendors deriving income from multiple system offerings than a weak
population of NonStop vendors barely getting by.” Look for his complete
story in the column Back for more … that will appear in the Mar – Apr,
2015 edition of The Connection.
DataExpress NonStop (DXNS) implicitly enjoys the system/power/network
etc. redundancy that comes with residing on the NonStop platform. DataExpress
Open Platform (DXOP) primarily lived on a windows platform; should
Windows become strangled – down went your primary FT (file transfer)
platform. That was unacceptable to DataExpress and because we had a big
brother version that would never fail, it constantly prodded us to think
of how to provide the same resilience to the Open platform. What we have
come up with is a far more robust offering that would have been
difficult to develop had we not enjoyed the NonStop experience! Are we
100% redundant? I think there will be NonStop traditionalists who will
always pick holes in what we have accomplished, but at DataExpresss, we
believe it would be. And quite obviously, whereas Windows was used as an
example above, there is now a common code base across Linux, Unix and
Windows (LUW) and we are even looking at OSS (for NonStop X) in the
near future.
The NonStop vendor community isn’t alone with leveraging NonStop
capabilities on platforms apart from NonStop as we have heard at recent
conferences from parties close to NonStop that HP too is doing something
similar. With the commoditization of NonStop nearing completion in the
NonStop X systems, sharing the underpinning technology with other
development groups within the HP Mission Critical teams seems to suggest
that NonStop will have an impact on all of them. As hybrid computers
continue to be referenced as being viable solutions to business problems
and with NonStop being a part of the proposed HP hybrids, for all
vendors, as Buckle noted in his column, “experience on systems apart
from NonStop will become very important.”
Shortly we will be making further announcements about the work we have done to leverage NonStop in ways to ensure greater robustness on LUW so watch out for them in our other blog posts and commentaries, and if as yet you haven’t read Buckle’s latest blog post to the DataExpress web site, check out the February 13, 2015 post FILES ARE STILL WITH US ….
Contact Info:
1401 Shoal Creek, Suite 250,
Highland Village, TX 75077
email:
sales@dataexpress.com
Sales:
972-899-3476
Corporate: 972-899-3460
OTUG
The OTUG Board invites you to the next OTUG meeting to be held on Thursday, April 2, 2015, at the Columbus, OH JP Morgan Chase Polaris location. We have the honor of Wendy Bartlett presenting both our newest HP Integrity NonStop X Product line and Modern Security Threats, in addition to many other interesting topics.
Please register at:
http://www.connect-community.org/events/event_details.asp?id=602093&group=#
The meeting agenda is below and directions to the event can be mapped on the registration page or by using your favorite travel app.
Nearby lodging can be found using the link below:
We hope to see you there!
OTUG
Meeting Agenda
April 2, 2015
JP Morgan Chase
1111 Polaris Parkway
Columbus, OH 43240-2050
Room 1D0269
8:30 – 9:00 Registration & Continental Breakfast – provided courtesy of HP
9:00 – 9:15 Welcome, Opening Remarks, OTUG business – Steve Barker, OTUG President / John Sesolak HP Liaison, kick off of the meeting
9:15 – 9:45 Tom Moylan/ HP NonStop Americas Sales Manager- update
9:45 – 10:45 HP Integrity NonStop X – Wendy Bartlett – Update on the newly released HP Integrity NonStop X and latest developments.
10:45 – Mid morning break provided courtesy by Xypro
11:00 – 11:40 Xypro Protection of Your Data – Kevin Boham – Update Xypro’s latest product offerings to keep your data safe and hackers away.
11:40 – 12:15 Network Kinetics – Justin Simonds – What is new with Network Kinetics who provides real time data stream analysis of data in motion in a NonStop Environment and is key in an overall big data environment.
12:15 – 12:50 Lunch – provided courtesy of Comforte
12:50 – 1:00 Connect & Technical Boot Camp Update – Hear all the excitement & what happened in 2014 and plans for 2015 big event from John Sesolak.
1:00 – 1:40 Make Valuable Data a Worthless Treasure - Comforte Dave Harper/Steve Kubick– A discussion on the methodologies to make the “pot of gold” at the end of a hacker’s rainbow difficult to access and worthless when found.
1:40 – 2:40 Modern Security Threats and Protecting Your NonStop Environments – Wendy Bartlett – An expert’s update on the world of security related to recent breaches, hacks & intrusions. What are the current trends and how can you make your environment safe especially with HP NonStop!
2:40 – 2:55 Mid afternoon break – provided courtesy by Xypro
2:55 – 3:30 Going Beyond SOAP for a Cleaner, Fresher Web Services Architecture – Keith Moore – This session discusses alternative modern web-based techniques like REST, websockets and server-side ECMAscript including a demonstration of node.js (aka Vegemite aka bomBora).
3:30 – 4:00 Update on Successful NonStop Mainframe Migrations – Mark Flanigan – Discussion of how easy is it to move form a Mainframe to a lower cost fault tolerant platform for processing CICS, DB2, VSAM, and Java.
4:00 – 4:30 OTUG Update – Steve Barker – OTUG Success and the future of this great group.
4:30 Prize drawings and closing:
OTUG wishes to thank its sponsoring partners for their generous support.
Special thanks to our partners HP, Xypro & Comforte
Find out more about us at
www.tandemworld.net
+44 (0) 20 8304 7979
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