comForte launches new security solution at Technical Boot Camp

The Technical Boot Camp is coming closer and closer and we are looking forward to another great event yet again.

As a Diamond Sponsor comForte will run two pre-conference workshops on Sunday afternoon and two vendor presentations during the week (date/time to be confirmed).

Join Stephen Tuska, Solution Architect, for the first workshop on ‘Enterprise tokenization and encryption powered by NonStop and comForte - we show you how its done’.

Next up on Sunday afternoon will be Brad Poole, Senior Solution Architect, and he will talk about ‘High speed data transfer using NSADI’. Brad will be joined by Justin Simonds, HPE, and Susan Raye from DataExpress.

The highlight though will be the launch of our new enterprise tokenization and encryption solution. Details of which will be shared at TBC in San Jose. Don’t miss the presentation by Henning Horst, SVP Security, who will unveil the new solution.

And finally, Brad will present on comForte’s experiences with YUMA/NSADI in practice.

We’d like to invite you to stop by our stand, attend our workshops and presentations to find out more about the latest product solutions on offer. Catch up with the comForte team on anything NonStop (and beyond) and challenge them with your particular requirements.

The TBC will also be a great opportunity to meet and greet with comForte’s new CEO, Michael Deissner, and other key members of comForte’s senior management team.

In the meantime, please check out our TBC event page for the latest updates.

We’re very much looking forward to seeing you at the TBC.

I recently discovered the ROKU Streaming Stick. This is a cool thumb drive device that plugs into the back of a TV and gives you “on screen” access to all of your cable channels. This lets you access your home cable service, and your Netflix account, and your HULU account, and your Amazon Prime movie account, and just about any other streaming service you subscribe to. When I travel and find myself with bad TV service in a smelly hotel room I plug my ROKU into the back of the TV and it’s just like I am at home. I can binge watch my favorite shows.

I know this device has nothing to do with the Tandem but I found it so cool I wanted to share it with my Tandem friends. I know this description doesn’t do it justice so I have decided to give a bunch of them away at the upcoming trade shows.

We will be giving away 10 ROKU streaming sticks at Boot Camp. Every couple of hours during the conference we will draw a name. We will post the winners. You can enter by stopping by our table and dropping your name in the hat. I know that not everyone will be attending Boot Camp in San Jose so you can also join in the contest via email. Read the following short articles, look for the magic phrase (in red), and email it to our Marketing team. The following three short subjects each contain a chance to win.

Here are the contest rules:

·       We will give away 10 ROKU devices during Bootcamp.

·       You can enter in person by stopping by our Boot Camp booth.

·       You can also enter by emailing us and asking to get in the drawing. You get one chance for each of the THREE PHRASES you send us (included in the text).

·       You can only win One ROKU per person

The ROKU works in North America, Canada, and the UK. If you win and are from some other place in the world we will email you an Amazon gift card of equivalent value.

Yep, you have three shots at winning from the online pool, and one additional chance if you stop by the booth. Everybody is welcome to enter. This means HPE, Vendors. Competitors, and End Users. Hopefully I have not made this too convoluted

FIRST POINT ================================

Zero Downtime Migration does not mean Zero Downtime

ZDM procedures are built upon Data Replication technology. You combine advanced Data Replication technology with very advanced Engineering Consulting to migrate platforms with zero downtime. The first step is the installation of the DR software. If your application uses Unaudited Enscribe then you have to intercept the IO’s from the application to track the IO traffic. Binding in the intercept library requires the application be stopped and restarted. This means you have an application outage. It’s hard to justify the implementation of a DR project for a Zero Downtime Migration when you first have to have an application outage.

I know some of the recent presentation’s HPE has been showing describe a magic process where migrations happen without an outage, but that’s deceptive. I keep hearing from HPE that Enscribe IO is not the focus of the Tandem. They overlook the point that millions and millions of online transactions each day are performed using Unaudited Enscribe IO. Applications like Base24 and CONNEX are built upon Unaudited Enscribe IO. These applications must take an outage to link in the intercept technology needed to replicate that traffic. The good news is that once you install DRNet into your first platform you will never have to have another outage again. Our ZDM Engineering Team will guide you thru your future upgrades with no down time.

It’s been my experience across our worldwide install base over the past 3 decades that not a single customer made the decision to implement DR software for ZDM. They implement for DR and have the added bonus of ZDM technology in place when they are ready to upgrade platforms.

Zero Downtime Migration is a complex activity and was first introduced to the Tandem community by NTI in 1992. The good news is with 25 years of experience we can show you ways to implement with minimal impact on your production environment.

SECOND POINT ================================

ZDM software is not a quick installation

As I mentioned, if you are interested in a Zero Downtime Migration then you first start with a Data Replication solution. The good news is this is what we do. In fact, this is ALL we do.

Over the past 30 years NTI has perfected a process to guide our customers thru a DR implementation. Just a few structured steps that we know will guarantee your success. We take our customers down this proven path, ensuring their success.

1. All projects begin with a Project Kickoff Conference Call. Our Technical Director conducts these calls with his Engineers in attendance.
2. During this call we will define the project goals, timelines, platforms, applications, and test environment. We will also ask the Customer to choose a technical contact within your organization for our Engineering group to work with.
3. NTI will select a Senior NTI Engineer to work directly with the Customer thru the evaluation process.
4. We will discuss the Project and Data Replication requirements with your team.
5. Software and manuals can be immediately downloaded from our FTP site.
6. We will ask the Customer to send us the NonStop data file formats. From this information we can plan your project.
7. Once we have had an opportunity to review the data, NTI will ask the Customer a series of clarification questions. We will use this information to better understand your environment.
8. NTI will assist the Customer in building the DRNet configuration environment to meet the Customer’s goals. We will electronically send these configuration files to you for installation. 
9. NTI will work with the Customer, remotely, during the evaluation period to support your testing and evaluation. Our Engineering group will be available for all support calls.

How long does this take? A DR proof can happen in as short as 30 days, but it’s been our long experience that our customers take from 3 to 6 months to implement and fully test a DR solution before going into production.

And how much does the NTI Engineering Professional Services cost? Nothing. Zero. Nada. It’s our practice to provide engineering PS at no charge to our customers. The goal of a DR project is to implement DR, not to roll up PS fees.

We were first to market with Data Replication for the Tandem. We were the first to introduce ZDM’s 25+ years ago. We were the first to implement a structured implementation program. And, crazy as it sounds, we are the only ones to give away Engineering Professional Services for free. DRNet is the number one NonStop DR product on the planet.

THIRD POINT ================================

Zero Downtime Migration IS NOT a reason to by DR software

We installed our very first DRNet customer way back in the late 1980’s. At that time we thought data protection was the most important value. It’s pretty important, but our Customers over the years have surprised us with another value we never contemplated.

Survey Says:

·       #1 - DR is a critical requirement of the business. No data means no business. We all can understand that.

·       #2 - Software Maintenance Flexibility is an important benefit to the IT department. A system with proper DR protection allows our customers to switch platform traffic, swap in new software, and switch traffic back. All without any transaction loss or customer impact.

·       #3 - Way way way down on the list is the benefit of implementing a “fork lift upgrade” of the Tandem hardware with zero downtime. Tandem customers keep their platforms an average of 4 years and 9 months. When they upgrade platforms they want to avoid destroying that perfect uptime record they have been maintaining since the Tandem was turned on. NTI’s ZDM Engineering Team makes that possible. One of our customers has performed 3 fork lift upgrades over the past 20 years. Each upgrade was a total system swap out. Each performed during a peak business day. Each performed with zero customer impact or transaction interruption.

What makes each of these benefits work for our customers? Our Refreshingly Real-Time Support from Real Engineers. NTI product support is AWESOME. Smart folks who know the software answer the phone 7x24 solving your critical problems when they happen.

==================================================

WOW… my above points were so long and serious that I’ve decided to give away 20 ROKU’s at Boot Camp J

In case you missed it in the above short points, and jumped to the last page like I sometimes do, email us and send us these three phrases and we will put your name in the ROKU drawing 3 times.

1.     Zero Downtime Migration is a complex activity and was first introduced to the Tandem community by NTI in 1992.

2.     DRNet is the number one NonStop DR product on the planet.

3.     NTI product support is AWESOME.

Send us your contest entry email to:

Kate Nee

Kate.Nee@Network-Tech.com

Subject: ROKU

          List the 3 phrases

We will confirm your entry and come back to you after Boot Camp with either your prize or a note letting you know who won.

And finally, a Jim McFadden TandemWorld article always has a shameless product plug, so here it comes:

DRNet is the coolest replication product on the planet. If you are not already a user you should call me so I can fix that.

DRNet® is world class NonStop Data Replication technology.

·       Real-time Active/Active Data Replication

·       Real-time Tandem to OPEN Data Replication

·       Real-time File Synchronization

·       Refreshingly Real-Time Support from Real Engineers

Cheers

Jim.McFadden@network-tech.com

+1 (402) 968 3674

Last year comForte demonstrated sending messages over an Infiniband connection using their Client Server Link (CSL) product between a Linux system and Nonstop X.   It all worked extremely fast as anticipated. We have enjoyed a business relationship with comForte for many years as we take advantage of their   security offerings and have integrated them with DataExpress. This year comForte and DataExpress are working together to test sending files over an Infiniband connection between DataExpress on a Linux (DXOP) and DataExpress on Nonstop X (DXNS). DataExpress is replacing FTP over TCP/IP with FTP over IB connections via an intercept library on NonStop. As for Linux, DataExpress is simply using IBM’s Java Sockets over RDMA (JSOR).

DataExpress, Inc.
1401 Shoal Creek, Suite 250, Highland Village, TX 75077

972-899-3476 (sales)
972-899-3460 (corporate)

BITUG NEWS

Coming soon:

·       Autumn Newsletter -  will be issued in the next few days - make sure you register for your copy by joining the BITUG mailing list at www.bitug.com

·       Little Sig – Thursday 8^th December 2016 at Barclays, Canary Wharf - This event will take the form of an education/training session in the morning from 09:00, user and HPE presentations in the afternoon, BITUG AGM and a social evening.  The Agenda is work in progress, but see current draft below.

Little Sig registration is now open – Secure your seat and see more detailed information here http://www.bitug.com/little-sig-2016

·      

The  European NonStop Conference and Exhibition and the BIG SIG rolled into one major event (eBITUG):

Do Not Miss Out - Mark Your Diary Now

9^th and 10^th MAY 2017 at the DoubleTree Hotel – Tower Of London

Vendor Members – Sponsorship opportunities will be emailed to you directly in the next few days.

For the latest information on all BITUG activity and to ensure you are first to know when event registration is open for the above events (there will be limited spaces  – so registration will be on a first come, first served basis) please visit http://www.bitug.com and join the BITUG mailing list.  Any questions please email chairman@bitug.com

Kevin Poultney

Chairman, BITUG.

BrightStrand International Limited

LightWave Server is middleware that allows applications running on virtually any platform to securely access NonStop applications through a RESTful Web service interface.

Accelerated Development of High-Speed Applications

Securing Data at Rest

Securing Data in Flight

TANDsoft’s Jack Di Giacomo received a panicked call a short while ago. A long-time OPTA2000 customer accidentally had entered the incorrect Daylight Saving Time (DST) transition date into the company’s consolidated system. The result? Thousands of applications would change from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time a week late. When the customer corrected the DST transition date, he discovered to his horror that only newly started processes accepted the new DST transition date. Those already running continued to reflect the incorrect date and would be off by an hour come the fallback from DST to Standard Time.

Fortunately for this customer and for all OPTA2000 customers, this virtual clock- and time-zone simulator from TANDsoft has a backup plan in case of such a disaster-in-the making. Created for every OPTA2000-connected process is a transition table that may remain constant for years unless a new date/time change is entered. When a process first starts, OPTA2000 instructs it to load its DST Transition Table and operate under the table’s specified times. Processes that do so have no need to communicate again with OPTA2000. The date and time transitions automatically take place without any need to shut down the system.

But when an update error to the transition table is made after the processes already have loaded their transition tables, invoked can be an OPTA2000 utility that instructs running processes once again to contact the OPTA2000 manager, which will instruct them to reload their transition tables that now, of course, will reflect the correct transition date. The processes continue to run, there is no interruption to the system; and in the case of the panicked customer, a potentially catastrophic situation is averted.

OPTA2000 virtual clock- and time-zone simulator allows existing backup, test, development, and production systems to support worldwide consolidated applications. It is user-friendly, easily installed, cost-effective, and requires no application modifications. Via OPTA2000, a single system can host thousands of applications, each with its own virtual system clock. OPTA2000 is the only NonStop solution available for such time-critical simulation. It is one of TANDsoft most popular products and represents TANDsoft’s expertise in interception technology.

OPTA2000 provides date/time simulation and time-zone simulation for all HP NonStop applications and data bases. Date and time simulation allows organizations to "time travel" their applications in the future or past to test all date and 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 regard to data center consolidation, OPTA2000 becomes increasingly valuable by allowing applications to operate in local date and time, independent of the current physical location or time zone of their data center.

TANDsoft’s OPTA2000

● Time-sensitive applications operate with virtual time zones in consolidated data center

● Applications sitting on a server in one time zone can accurately timestamp local transactions generated outside that time zone

● Applications run in “user” time, not “system” time, without interrupting normal system operation

● No need to ever change the system clock. Multiple virtual system clocks on a single NonStop server

● All Nonstop Guardian and OSS programs, programming languages and data bases (Enscribe, SQL/MP, SQL/MX) are supported

● Date and time testing with future time, past time and frozen time

● Accommodates Daylight Saving Time (DST) transition tables

● Requires no application source-code modifications

● Supports in-house, HP, and major third-party solutions, even those where source code is unavailable

● Available for NonStop X and all other NonStop servers.

In addition to OPTA2000, TANDsoft solutions include FileSync for automatic file synchronization, replication, and data deduplication; Sensitive Data Intercept (SDI) for protecting sensitive data-at-rest in Enscribe, SQL/MP, and SQL/MX databases; the OPTA suite of interception and trace utilities (OPTA-Trace Online Process Tracer and Analyzer, Recycle Bin, Low Pin Optimizer, and EMS Alerts Online Startup and Termination Capture Utility); 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; and E2S-Lite, which permits efficient, low-cost Enscribe modifications without the need to change a program’s source code.

For information about TANDsoft solutions, contact Jack Di Giacomo at +1 (514) 695-2234. Free trials are available. www.tandsoft.com.

TANDsoft will exhibit in the Partner Pavilion at the NonStop Technical Boot Camp, 13-16 November, San Jose, California USA. Visit us at Booth #36. TANDsoft also is a co-sponsor of the Boot Camp’s Casino Night on Tuesday, 15 November.



 

Banco Agrario de Colombia S.A. is a new HPE NonStop customer AND a new OmniPayments Inc. customer.  It is a state-run financial institution focused on financing activities related to the development of Colombia’s rural, agricultural, livestock, fishing, forestry and agro industrial sectors.  Headquartered in Bogota, Banco Agrario has 742 branches nationwide.  Banco Agrario payment systems have been operating on a Unix-based financial transaction switch.  However, the bank’s requirements for increased fault tolerance and extreme reliability impacted its decision to replace its existing payments solution with the OmniPayments switch on NonStop X.  A key consideration of this migration story was that HPE was able to compete successfully with the UNIX price point.

The OmniPayments Financial Transaction Switch is a switching solution for the financial and retail industries. It is deployed on NonStop for the highest availability and offers all the requisite functionality to manage credit/debit-card transactions. It manages multiple devices, hosts application interfaces, and interoperates with third-party products or other systems if required. OmniPayments easily expands to provide additional functionality when needed and supplies complete security functions for every financial transaction handled, including encryption-at-rest and encryption-in-flight. Available 24x7, OmniPayments will survive any single fault, requires no downtime for maintenance or upgrades, and supports a range of disaster-recovery solutions.

OmniPayments can be installed either as a complete, off-the-shelf solution or can be enhanced with customer-requested modifications and features to improve cost-effectiveness, efficiency, and risk mitigation.  Our team of 100-plus NonStop specialists are skilled at rapid project turnarounds and meeting deadlines.

50% Less Guarantee - OmniPayments sells its popular NonStop-based financial transaction switch at a price that guarantees you 50% off your current transaction costs.  Unlike other switch providers, who base your costs on transaction volume, OmniPayments sells its customers a one-time, perpetual software license.  That is what makes the “50%-Less” difference.  No volume fees.  No transaction fees.  No surprises.  No penalties for company growth.  It’s just that simple. 

OmniCloudX - OmniPayments also distributes OmniCloudX on NonStop X. OmniCloudX hosts numerous OmniPayments instances at a pay-for-use price so attractive that mid-size retailers and financial organizations now can enjoy the benefits of having their own high-capacity transaction switches. Starts at only $5,000 USD per month.

Preauthorization Services - The OmniPayments Preauthorization Engine is used by financial institutions in conjunction with the OmniPayments Financial Transaction Switch or as a seamless interface to other providers’ switches via a custom support module (CSM). We call it the Fraud Blocker!

OmniPayments systems in production today process 700 million transactions per month, generated by point-of-sales terminals and over 14,000 ATMs. A single OmniPayments system supports up to 10,000 transactions per second. Multiple OmniPayments systems can cooperate to provide any capacity required by an application. From our seven worldwide locations, we serve as a 24×7 managed services provider for remote production monitoring. 

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) and web services have been with us for more than a decade, and of late, we are seeing microservices making a bold statement. However, all too often, our minds switch off when we hear SOA and web services referenced in webinars or presented on PowerPoint slides. For many within IT, it’s all talk of SOA and web services seems akin to magic, as if embracing this single solution can solve all of our modernization issues. Despite good intentions of SOA and web services evangelizers, what’s often overlooked is just how important the services-oriented paradigm has become – particularly for modernizing applications on the NonStop platform.

At its core, SOA and web services represent an opportunity to re-use legacy applications’ underlying business logic in new and, yes, very modern ways. SOA and web services not only make the presentation modern, they also create new ways to use existing and proven software, with no changes to applications’ underlying business logic. For the most part, modernization with SOA and web service entails configuration changes, along with support for enhanced communication. A contract becomes necessary when service level agreements (SLAs) are needed to ensure that the business logic will retain certain thresholds, such as functionality, availability, and quality of service.

Musings on NonStop!

October, ‘16

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

Weighing heavily on my mind this month has been virtualization and with more information emanating from the HPE NonStop development team, it seems as though the time is fast approaching when we can just as easily run NonStop in the virtual world as we do today in the real world. I have always been a big believer in having choices and so I welcome the arrival of vNonStop. However, real world deployments are going to come down to just how big an appetite we have for risk. Fortunately, there are some very smart minds in NonStop development working on documenting the reference architecture for vNonStop and this should ease the pain as customers contemplates embracing something entirely different.

By the time Tandemworld October reaches you I will have wrapped up a couple of presentations that I am giving at several upcoming RUG events. Sure, I would have liked to have made it to VNUG of course – something about Scandinavia that I always find attractive. I have joined the VNUG group on several occasions and yes, I have even participated in the VNUG and FINTUG winter ferry crossing event, an experience I chronicled in an early post to the NonStop community blog, Real Time View – I've got to find a safe haven ... It is at RUG events worldwide that you gain insights into NonStop vendors’ products and features and these events continue to be a “must attend” time for Margo and me.

This month it’s more a case of spanning the Americas as first-up it is Scottsdale, AZ, down in the southwest for DUST and then, just two weeks later, it’s Mississauga ON (just outside Toronto), up in the northeast for CTUG. And we continue to take these trips by car as we still enjoy the rides immensely. The theme of both of my presentations will have been virtualization and the potential impact of vNonStop on the NonStop community. Expressed as simply as I can, I am fully expecting to see future growth for NonStop coming from vNonStop, even as NonStop in the real world continues its steady climb back to decent numbers, a couple of upgrades at a time, all driven by increasing transaction volumes. vNonStop will likely prove attractive to solutions vendors who have shied away from supporting NonStop in the past, but now, even as we look at private clouds within the data center, vNonStop will bring with it a level of availability not expected from cloud-based solutions.  

However, when it comes to the themes of the posts and commentaries for September, 2016, it’s been a case of musing on virtualization but just as importantly, they have been peppered with observations about the growing importance of managed service providers. There’s no hiding from the fact that as a community we are aging and as we age, there is an ever-widening skills gap developing. All the while, I know of no business prepared to invest in educating its staff on NonStop – so regionally, I am seeing a lot of interest in simply leveraging the skill sets already in place at managed service providers. Shortly, I will have a lot more to say on this topic so, as they say, stay tuned.

But for more about my observations including a couple of interesting conversations I had last month, check out the complete list of posts and commentaries below:

Real Time View:
And this month I wrote a fourth post as I celebrated the commencement of my tenth year of blogging!
http://itug-connection.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-song-remains-same-major-events-of.html
http://itug-connection.blogspot.com/2016/09/changes-for-better-hpe-to-focus-on-what_15.html
http://itug-connection.blogspot.com/2016/09/changes-in-procedures-changes-in-models.html

LinkedIn blog / Pulse:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hpe-sells-its-software-having-already-sold-enterprise-richard-buckle?trk=mp-author-card
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-rug-events-telling-us-nonstop-vendors-forefront-whats-buckle?trk=mp-author-card
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hpe-nonstop-systems-open-letter-cios-worldwide-who-have-buckle?trk=mp-author-card

ATMmarketplace:
http://www.atmmarketplace.com/blogs/mobile-not-a-unique-channel-but-an-integral-part-of-every-delivery-channel/

ComForte:
https://comforte.com/blog/blog-article/transforming-proven-nonstop-applications-with-soa/

Striim:
http://www.striim.com/blog/2016/09/data-data-everywhere-but-still-not-enough-information-striim-does-the-analysis-just-in-time/

DataExpress:
https://dataexpress.com/2016/09/21/clouds-horizon-dataexpress-embraces-hybrid-computing/

TCM Solutions:

To read more about my conversations – check out the LinkedIn group, TCM NonStop Experts – HPE NonStop / Tandem Services and Solutions and watch for some breaking news from Margo and me next month!

Tandemworld (Musings on NonStop):
Where you will find a collection of posts and articles in support of DataExpress, TCM Solutions as well as my monthly Musings on NonStop:
http://www.tandemworld.net/newsletter_sep16.htm

Buckle-Up-Travel:
http://buckle-up-travel.blogspot.com/2016/09/getting-ready-for-fall-bring-it-on.html

Richard Buckle
Cofounder and CEO

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

TCM Solutions - providers of HPE NonStop On-Site & Remote Systems Management for 20 years without fail

Last month I opened with the observation about just how much we were learning of late from our customers, as well as from HPE! There has been so much information for the NonStop community to digest over a relatively short span of time that I am finding it difficult to keep up. On the other hand, it’s always reassuring to sit down with NonStop users where we get a more accurate indication of what is truly influencing their decision making.

It’s no secret that the NonStop vendor community prizes Regional User Group (RUG) meetings highly – they are among the principle vehicles for collecting intelligence on these NonStop users. Most recent for us was the trip north some of the TCM team took to participate in VNUG. This is a particularly well-organized RUG with a long history dating back decades, so everything we hear resonates with the TCM team. Not surprisingly, when the TCM Team next gets together the observations we make at RUG events is discussed and returning from VNUG, the conversations were indeed lively.

What aroused our attention were two very clear trends we observed. Whether it’s something you observe or only hear anecdotally, the NonStop “skills shortage” is a reality. But more of that a little later in this article. On a more positive note, among the NonStop user community there is an expectation that there will be a resurgence in NonStop deployments  with the onset of NonStop X together with a practical way to interconnect NonStop X with other systems via NSADI (formerly, Yuma), and now the anticipated vNonStop and with it, potentially a need for NonStop-as-a-Service. Markets such as FinTech and Healthcare are markets that are good examples where such resurgence may become visible – indeed, it’s our hope that all of the NonStop community begins re-examining their options when it comes to further deployments of NonStop systems – real or virtual.

When you consider the attention the press is giving to clouds and their impact on data centers there is considerable hype that doesn’t always sit well with CIOs. Pressure from above to “cloud everything” often times misses the point – on premise systems are still needed as there will be customer relationships that need a degree of security and plain old fashion integrity maintenance that public clouds simply don’t address with a level of confidence acceptable to these CIOs. And no manner of argument detracts from just how expensive public clouds can become as user needs scale up. On the other hand, modelling a modern data center after public clouds will likely generate more interest and as the techniques become better known, HPE’s vision of hybrid infrastructures combining traditional IT with on premise private clouds makes a lot of sense.

As for the skills shortage within the NonStop community – a situation that will be exacerbated as sales of NonStop X grow and new users are added – even the skilled staff on hand is going to have to acquire additional skills as well. NonStop is no longer a standalone system but an integral part of something much bigger – software defined everything? Just how will the NonStop user community become proficient in all aspects of not just the new NonStop but everything it touches? After years where vendors providing products held center stage, momentum seems to be shifting to where it will be those vendors like TCM that provide managed services.

Next month, the NonStop community will be heading to San Jose for the annual NonStop Technical Boot Camp (TBC). TCM will be among the many vendors supporting this event and there will be plenty of opportunities to discuss managed service offerings in detail. However, perhaps the more important component when it comes to addressing the skills shortage is to consider leveraging the skillsets of companies providing managed services. In our presentation at VNUG – Adapt or Die: The NonStop Skills Gap – a light hearted look at a potentially serious issue facing NonStop we highlighted that one outcome from all that we have learnt of late from HPE is that the widespread perception that NonStop would slowly be phased out and that NonStop would be just another legacy system is dead wrong.

We are planning to provide a follow-up presentation at the TBC in San Jose so if you are concerned about the options available to you when it comes to filling your skills gap this is likely to be among the highlights of the event. Should you have more pressing needs and TBC is simply too far away, please contact me as below – I’m always open to discussing just how well we can remedy any skills gap situation you may be experiencing today. 

Kind Regards

Tony Craig

Managing Director

TCM House, NonStop Centre of Excellence,
Saltire Centre, Pentland Park, Glenrothes, Fife, KY6 2AG
www.tcm.uk.com
+44(0)1592 770081