Tandemworld eNewsletter for June 2010

Season’s Greetings from

Computer Security Products would like to wish the NonStop Community and all of our Customers around the world a very Happy Holiday Season and best wishes for a Prosperous New Year.

www.cspsecurity.com

Seasons Greetings and a Prosperous New Year from BrightStrand International

BrightStrand International would like to wish everyone a very happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year. We would also like to thank all of our customers for their business and continued support throughout the last year.

It was good to meet with old friends, and make new ones at the BITUG BIGSIG at Trinity House on 2^nd December. It was a fine event despite the havoc that was caused by the weather, which reduced the number of attendees.

One of the many informative presentations given was ‘Migrating Safeguard, tips and tricks’ presented by BrightStrand’s own Mike Jones. This presentation examines Safeguard Migrations under the headings of:

What impacts the overall strategy of the migration

General principles to follow

An overview of the strategy

The order of tasks in the migration

Potential pitfalls and how to avoid them

The migration itself

If you were unable to attend the event or missed the presentation it is available to view at http://bitug.com/sig_reports/02_12_2010/2010_BIGSIG_SG_Migration.pdf or send an email to sales@brightstrand.com. If you wish to discuss the presentation further or have a requirement for a Safeguard Migration or any other Security related issues please contact Dave Stewart today on +44 (0)7831 775115 or email Dave for more information.

www.brightstrand.com

NonStop - A Running Commentary

December, ‘10

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

Following my blogs? Check out:

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

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

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

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

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

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

My days of providing predictions on who will win and what to expect when teams compete have, sadly, come up well short of the mark. Particularly when it comes to sporting teams from my home country, Australia.

Following competent performances across the board at the recent Commonwealth Games event in Delhi, India, there’s not a day that goes by where something or other that I forecasted in previous commentaries posted to this eNewsletter fails to materialize. New Zealand even beat the Aussies in a rugby league final last month – they’ve only won 28 of 118 Tests, as lopsided a contest as you can imagine!

From predicting a sweep in auto sports, and sitting atop or close to the top of their respective ladders, first it was Casey Stoner who, even though a former MotoGP champion and winning a recent round outside Melbourne, Victoria, finished the season in fourth place. Perhaps, in writing about the possible outcomes I may have been better served if I had hedged my bets!

But perhaps even more shocking, when I last looked at the ladders and where we had Australians atop the Indy Racing League (IRL) ladder and F1 – Will Power lost the championship by one point finishing second, while Mark Weber closed out his F1 season in third place.

I’m not taking responsibility for any of the outcomes nor am I going to dwell on the closeness of the events themselves other than just to highlight that the closeness of the action gave us races unlike we have seen for a very long time!

There’s much more I can discuss – outcomes of recent rugby and cricket contests notwithstanding. However, it’s still a little too early to talk at length about these recent displays and I will leave further analysis until the New Year. And no, this is not an open invitation either to email me your opinions or observations – I have received more than enough already!

Safe to say, future sporting forecasts of mine will be shrouded in more guarded terms.

Readers will know how active I have been in social media and how many blogs and forums I actively pursue. While some readers continue to be surprised that I find the time, the new reality with the business I am building is that I make it a point to find the time as this has now become my job!

This past week I began to add new labels to blog sites, and realigned a number of my LinkedIn accounts – closing groups, creating sub-groups, re-inviting past members, and sending announcements to my contacts. Tedious, of course, but hopefully simplifying navigation on LinkedIn and other such sites.

It was while I was moving one of my social sites that I rebuilt a discussion that had taken place on a former site about how many garages should be built for modern homes and then, what cars would we buy. Of late I have come to the opinion that no home should be built without at least six garages.

This then reminded me of a recent conversation I had with a good friend of mine, Brian, who spends almost as much time as I do at the local Starbucks. Brian was building an extreme server for home use, where he could install the latest CAD software as well as edit video feeds he has collected from different car events.

It wasn’t the awesome power of the motherboard that wowed me, as he removed it from its carton, but rather the Intel chip that he had selected. As the wrapping paper was put to one side, I had my first look at a very modern Intel processor. It was a new x86 chip with 6 cores / 12 threads, and the text on the carton assured the purchaser that they would have the wherewithal to run the mix of complex transactions, routinely needed by today’s engineering professional. Indeed!

It may shock many of you, but I was on a computer room floor, many decades ago, standing with a CIO as he proudly showed-off his new IBM 370/158 AP mainframe – the AP standing for Attached Processor and the first time either of us had seen two computers, tied to common memory (usually only 4 to 8 Megabytes, mind you), and configured this way, we somewhat jokingly speculated that the site could now process every online business transaction in Australia in a matter of a few hours!

As Brian reminded me, as he continued to un-wrap the components of his new server, “you likely have more technology in your wrist watch that was in that early mainframe!”

NonStop is now tracking closely to the Intel roadmap for Itanium, and the number of cores will continue to rise. We are well past the introduction of dual-core chips and will welcome four-core chips shortly, even as we all have become aware that six-core and eight-core chips will likely follow as early as 2012.

And I am going to forecast that our appetite for these extreme chips will not slacken.

While my track record with sporting teams hasn’t proven all that reliable, there were a number of mitigating factors such as crashes - not unheard of in the technology arena, of course – when it comes to technology predictions however, I feel a lot more comfortable going on record with the forecasts that follow.

The big issue here for me is whether the NonStop product line will simply shut down and re-tool, making one server redundant as it moves on to the next? Will customers who invest in a dual core chip find that the only server available, eighteen months later, is a quad- or even six- core chip?

Given the nature of the applications typically found running on a NonStop and the need to devote considerable time to the QA process before turning it loose in a production environment, could we face the prospect that in the time it takes us to validate and certify a modern NonStop server and its application, it’s already obsolete?

While talking about this with Thomas Gloerfeld, head of marketing at comForte GmbH, he admitted that there will be “pressure on application providers having to provide compatible applications across the full chip line.”

Thomas then added “I guess the underlying question is, do we in NonStop need all the power coming from Intel at an increasing pace? In particular when you consider the Converged Infrastructure (CI) which may lead to select (mission-critical) applications running on NonStop, with the rest being farmed out to cheaper, commodity servers that can be more cost-effectively scaled out, will users need the increased performance?”

In other words, what Thomas is suggesting is, that users may become even more selective about what runs on NonStop and how they end up deploying servers with the more powerful chips! This in turn suggests having options when it comes to NonStop server performance levels, may turn out to be a good thing!

While nothing can be confirmed or any guarantees given even as HP continues to play its cards close to its chest, I have to believe that as long as chips are being manufactured, we may see servers relying on them continue to be supported. Truly rich transactions that mix video and other forms of communication in real time and need switching and / or analysis and / or authorization and validation, will drive the demand for much faster chips.

For the rest of us however, the computer power already available will continue to suffice – after all, the days or wanting to process every transaction in the country may be behind us. On the other hand and despite Thomas’s concerns, there’s an old saying in motor racing - you can never have too much horsepower and no matter how much you do have, someone else is going to have more! I can’t imagine seeing any of us returning servers that execute too quickly.

Having said this, however, for those of us within the NonStop community that have a preference for finer granularity and favor the deployment of many, lesser-cored, chips that decrease the fault zone being managed, HP will be cognizant of the value that they can provide supporting servers using different chip packages. Already, the first signs of this potential outcome are beginning to be signaled to the user community.

During this month’s BITUG user event, I was told by a participant that NonStop product management were beginning to address this topic along the lines that not every customer may require the increased performance available from the latest Intel Itanium chip. The product manager then acknowledged that the opportunity to provide NonStop servers with different multi-core chips could likely create a different business model that HP will need to step up to and address.

But who can say what will develop - having access to multi-core chips up and down the Intel roadmap may prove to be the best Christmas present ever. And that’s a prediction I feel a whole lot safer making and one I am less concerned about hedging my bets!

Richard Buckle

Founder and CEO

Pyalla Technologies, LLC

Email: richard@pyalla-technologies.com

LinkedIn - Real Time View user group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1878133&trk=hb_side_g

LinkedIn - Pyalla Technologies User Group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2396887&trk=hb_side_g

Gravic, Inc. is pleased to announce that Paul J. Holenstein, Dr. Bruce Holenstein, and Dr. Bill Highleyman were awarded US Patent No. 7,801,851 entitled “Method for Ensuring Referential Integrity in Multi-threaded Replication Engines” on September 21, 2010. During replication of transaction data from a source database to a target database, one or more multiple paths may be needed to support the transaction load. This IP addresses the splitting and recombination/reserialization of the replication traffic across multiple delivery channels to achieve transactional consistency and referential integrity during replay.

We are also pleased to announce that Dr. Bruce Holenstein and Paul J. Holenstein were awarded US Patent No. 7,739,237 entitled “Data Input Routing after Failure” on June 15, 2010. During an application session that is being sent to/processed and stored at a source node, if a replication engine is configured for replicating the application’s transactions to a target node, then failure of the source node typically causes the in-flight transactions to be aborted (and resubmitted) to the target node when it takes over. This IP addresses avoiding the abort and resend of the data for the in-flight transactions; rather, after a failure of the source node, the application connects to the target node and continues processing the in-flight transactions where it was when the failure occurred.

SATUG 2011 Summit and Conference
Southern African Technology User Group
Kopanong Hotel and Conference Centre
Benoni, South Africa
March 7-10

For additional information about Gravic’s products and services, including free whitepapers on how Shadowbase data replication solutions can solve your company’s business continuity, data integration and synchronization, application modernization, and real-time business intelligence challenges, please visit: www.gravic.com/shadowbase.

CommitWork Developer Suite

Will Cobol die out?

Yeah, the situation is even worse: Cobol programmers are dying out, but not the language Cobol.

We need new Cobol programmers and these programmers need modern development tools.

Eclipse is the first choice!

From HP you can get the NSDEE (HP NonStop Development Environment Version 2.0 for Eclipse).

CommitWork offers the CDS (Commitwork Developer Suite).

This presentation will show you the differences between these Eclipse-Plugins:

http://www.commitwork.com/attachments/061_Eclipse_for_NonStop.pdf

Our CDS offers you:

Syntaxhighlighting
Marking of compiler errors in the source
Outlineview (shows the procedure names and sections in a separate view)
Integrated Peruse(Spooler)
DDL-Browser
SQL-Statement generator
Library-Browser
Utilization of your existing compile macros
Support of Tal, Cobol85, NCCobol, ScreenCobol

So if you want more comfort, just go here and ask for a 30 day evaluation:

http://www.commitwork.com/en/products/commitwork-developer-suite.html

For any further Information please visit us at http://www.commitwork.com/

Contact:              Hans-Fried Kirschbaum
                              Kirschbaum@Commitwork.de
                              +49 231 94116910

Ban Bottlenecks®

Happy Holidays!

Here’s hoping that your holiday season is happy and free from stress.

Ban Bottlenecks®:

30 years experience (combined) NonStop performance consulting.

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

Implementing effective, disciplined, proactive capacity management programs.

Contact Us For A Free System Audit.

assist@banbottlenecks.com

1.415.256.8369

www.banbottlenecks.com

Ascert Announces Release of New SWIFT Driver

Building on its rapidly expanding driver library, Ascert releases a new SWIFT driver simulator expanding on available testing automated solutions.

Sausalito, California (PRWEB) December 14, 2010 - Ascert releases it first SWIFT driver for use in VersaTest Automator. “The new SWIFT driver adds significant depth to our ability to service the testing community via the VersaTest Automator product,” says Simon Miles, Ascert’s Product Architect for the VersaTest product line. Over 9000 financial organizations, banks, and corporations in 209 countries use the SWIFT platform to communicate financial transactions. These organizations can now benefit from significant testing automation capabilities via our SWIFT driver/simulator.”

The SWIFT driver makes use of the new Extensible Field Handling capabilities within the latest release of VersaTest. This is an enhancement to the already extensive message processing capabilities of the product that allows the product to utilize an extended set of message parsing functions. The new SWIFT driver utilizes Ascert’s Driver Framework Standards (DFS) which enable efficient sharing of common functions, cross functional testing across multiple test environments, and many automation features that significantly streamline the testing process.

In addition to new simulator capabilities, the SWIFT driver from Ascert offers unparalled levels of automation allowing users to cross validate across environments, start and stop test runs automatically, and generate automatic exception reporting capabilities on errors in the system. Users of other Ascert DFS drivers have reported up to 50% savings in testing runs enabling redeployment of test personnel increasing overall test coverage within the organization. To find out more about the SWIFT driver or efficient automation using Ascert’s technologies, contact one of the local Ascert offices.

Company Background:

Ascert is recognized as a leading provider of premier testing software solutions. Ascert was founded in 1992 to provide automated software testing solutions that help companies measure the performance, reliability and scalability of their mission-critical back-end servers and applications. With over 100 clients worldwide, Ascert's products and services are used at some of the world's most successful companies. Off-the-shelf simulators include solutions for EFT testing, POS testing, ATM testing, IFX testing, EMV/chip card testing, ISO8583 testing, SWIFT testing and 3270 & 6530 terminal testing. Ascert’s custom simulators have been used for testing air traffic control systems and biometric payment systems. Ascert's products assist testing professionals across industry segments to better manage their testing processes and environments through an end-to-end tool set.

For more information on Ascert or its products, contact:

For inquiries in the America’s and Asia-Pacific:

Dr. Richard B. Greene, DBA

Ascert, LLC
759 Bridgeway
Sausalito, CA 94965, USA

Telephone: 1-415-339-8500
Toll Free: 1-877-ASCERT-IT Fax: 1-415-339-8501

E-mail: info@ascert.com

For inquiries in Europe, Middle East, and Africa:

Mr. Mike Wainwright

Ascert, Limited
63 Mansell Street,
London, E1 8AN, England

Telephone: +44 (20) 7488 3470
Fax: +44 (20) 7488 3477

E-mail: ukinfo@ascert.com

www.ascert.com

comForte - CSL achieves CI-ready certification

comForte's Client Server Link (CSL) product was recently awarded the Converged Infrastructure Ready certification which makes CSL the first CI-ready SOA and web services enabling solution on NonStop. CSL makes use of both the iTP web server and the Eclipse development environment. CSL runs on HP NonStop Blade Systems.

For more information about the CI-ready program and about who is already certified go to

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/us/en/partners/converged-infrastructure-ready-solutions.html

We wish all our customers, business partners and friends in the NonStop world Happy Holidays and a healthy and prosperous New Year.

Read the comForte Lounge blog and join the discussion in LinkedIn ...

http://comfortelounge.blogspot.com/

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=3129511

Understanding Converged Infrastructure

At the recent Gartner Data Center Management Conference, Gartner’s Jeff Hewitt dubbed the major converged infrastructure players to be the Big Five: Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM and Oracle. HP has also recognized many third-party software products as being conducive to a converged infrastructure, and has compiled a list of those that are “CI ready” certified.

Some of these products actually turn passive NonStop applications into active participants in this data center optimization strategy by integrating them into the CI stack. NuWave Technologies’ SOAP/AM^® products not only facilitate this process, but they are also standards-compliant, and have been production proven since 2003.

To learn more about converged infrastructure and how you can benefit from it, just register for NuWave's upcoming webinar, “Understanding Converged Infrastructure for HP NonStop”. This webinar will be held on January 6^th at noon EST and will also highlight other new technologies, including enterprise service buses (ESBs).

Gabrielle Guerrera

Marketing Director

NuWave Technologies

(603) 594-9896 x252

http://www.nuwave-tech.com

Research the extent of your PCI-DSS scope

If you're just starting on the road to PCI-DSS compliance, one of the first jobs is establish the size of the task in hand, by finding out exactly where PANs reside on your system. The fastest way of doing this is by electronically scanning your system looking for suspected PAN data and creating a clear report of the findings.

With a list of PAN locations established, you can then assess whether your various PAN storage locations are essential or not - the fewer locations that PAN data is stored or processed, the smaller your PCI scope, the lower your risk and the lower the cost of achieving PCI compliance will be.

PANfinder is a new software tool from 4tech Software which does exactly what has been mentioned above - searches your HP NonStop for readable PAN data. Once you've established your PCI scope and rendered your PAN data unreadable, PANfinder is valuable tool for proving to auditors/QSAs that you comply with PCI-DSS Requirements 3.4 and 6.3.4 - all PANs are unreadable and no live PANs on test/dev machines.

For more information please visit http://www.4techsoftware.com/panfinder.htm or if you have any questions or you'd like to arrange a free evaluation please email info@4techsoftware.com

A very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year from Insider Technologies to all our customers, friends and families.

Insider Technologies would like to wish all our customers and friends, a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year, as Insider celebrates the start of their third decade of innovate software development for HP NonStop, Windows, Unix and Linux platforms.

Insider Technologies would also like to pass on their thanks and best wishes to all of our customers for their continued support over the past year.

For new TandemWorld ‘readers’, then please allow us to introduce ourselves to you:

http://www.insidertech.co.uk/AboutUs/tabid/84/Default.aspx

We are a company who produces highly focused and graphically advanced products for monitoring a broad range of technologies, operating systems and subsystems across Windows, Unix, Linux and HP NonStop platforms, incorporating database, transaction, web, and PDA expertise.

We pride ourselves on being creative, seeing this as an ability to establish a solution that was not there before and the result of this creativity is a variety of products which operate in Financial, Government & Defence and Messaging Markets.

Samples of our products consist of:

RTLX Reactor

If you're looking for a real-time, highly integrated transaction / payments monitoring WEB Browser solution to ensure your BASE24™ and BASE24-eps™ systems are always at their highest level of availability, then you’re looking for RTLX REACTOR, which also incorporates NonStop EMS alert, generic log file, JMX and XML monitoring.

http://www.insidertech.co.uk/Products/RTLXReactor/tabid/89/Default.aspx

Reflex 80:20

A dynamic HP NonStop Management tool, providing real-time, proactive and historical monitoring for all HP NonStop subsystems, Applications and Services including OSS and XPNET, whether they run on ServerNet, HP Integrity NonStop or HP Integrity NonStop BladeSystem platforms.

http://www.insidertech.co.uk/Products/Reflex/tabid/245/Default.aspx

MultiBatch

A powerful & maintainable batch processing environment designed to exploit the HP NonStop server architecture for the Guardian & OSS operating systems. All job status data can be relayed to a Windows server for graphical & tabular charts, management reports & Real-Time tracking.

http://www.insidertech.co.uk/Products/MultiBatch/tabid/88/Default.aspx

Solutions

In addition to the above products, Insider also provides bespoke development, Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), Payments monitoring and WebSphere MQ monitoring.

For any information on any of our products, please contact support@insidertech.co.uk. Or visit our website at www.insidertech.co.uk and sign-up for our FREE newsletter.

Insider Technologies Limited, Spinnaker Court, Chandlers Point, 37 Broadway, Salford Quays, Manchester, M50 2YR, United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0) 161 876 6606.

Quality Certified to ISO9008 / 2000 (DNV). All Trademarks acknowledged

Lessons from Data Breaches of 2010

SecurityWeek recently published “Lessons from the Most Interesting Data Breaches of 2010” and some of the article’s highlights may really surprise you. For example, the article states that there has been a 93.7% drop in the volume of data stolen from 2009 to 2010. An analysis from the Privacy Clearinghouse, a public database which records all breaches of personal and sensitive information belonging to US citizens, shows that about 230 million data records were taken in 2009 and only 13 million so far this year. It’s a positive number, but keep in mind that 2009 saw two major breeches with Heartland and the Veteran’s Administration. Of course, this drop also underscores the security investments companies have made over the past few years. Indeed, such efforts and investments have paid off in greatly enhanced security, helping to make data breaches extremely difficult.

Another interesting and key finding of the article touches on the value of data shifting from lower to higher. We here at XYPRO have seen this trend for quite some time!

2 Key Lessons from the article

So, what can be done to avoid data loss and breaches as we move into 2011? Below are two key lessons to consider:

1. Enforce data is accessed only by authorized parties. At a minimum, they should block access from former staff and from employees attempting to access data beyond their need-to-know level.

XYGATE customers easily achieve this role-based access control goal with the Access PRO software solution. Access PRO functionality provides the core of a well-secured HP NonStop system. With this software in use, Individual accountability with full keystroke audits is achieved, while restricting each user to a list of authorized actions based on that user's job functions.

2. Block access from any illegitimate application. Security controls should be able to block an unauthorized process (the malicious code).

XYGATE customers rely on the ability to restrict all NonStop SUPER and Sensitive user access to “least privilege” based on multiple criteria, including IP address.

Like many of our clients who use XYGATE, you too can implement XYGATE for Role Based Access Control, keystroke auditing, and SSO authentication. FIPS validated encryption and automated compliance analysis completes the solution. Indeed, as we enter a new year, it’s a great time to reflect on where your security measures stand now, and what you need to do to safeguard yourself in the future.

Companies from across the globe have relied on XYGATE to cover all of their HP NonStop security requirements. In fact, XYGATE is used by six of the world’s top 10 bank processors*.

Click here to read the entire SecurityWeek article.

*As reported in the 2010 FinTech 100

What you need for PCI Compliance:

Data at Rest Security for Backups, Fully Integrated with HP NonStop VLE

PCI compliance is progressively getting stricter about what is acceptable for storage of customer information. This includes backups of the data, which may actually be more vulnerable based on where and how they are stored, transmitted or transported. The only truly secure way to address these requirements is to use robust encryption and key management that meets government standards. HP has created an infrastructure on NonStop that provides the basic building blocks for such a solution, with their Enterprise Secure Key Manager (ESKM) product, and the Volume Level Encryption (VLE) option on NonStop Blade and NS-series systems. Together these products provided encryption of data at rest on disk drives connected to CLIMs.

However, for tape storage VLE simply passes keys from the ESKM to an LTO 4 tape drive for its application of encryption to data written to physical media. Until now there has not been a solution to apply the security of ESKM + VLE to virtual tape storage.

ETI-NET is announcing the immediate availability of the VLE-integration option for its BackPack™ virtual tape solution. Virtual tape images can be transparently encrypted in industry-standard format using keys securely generated and delivered by an HP ESKM via the VLE option in NonStop CLIMs. Once encrypted, these virtual tape images can be transmitted and stored on a variety of media and storage systems without concern for the security of their content.

The BackBox VLE integration option features:

• Integrates with the customer’s enterprise-wide key management

• Use of keys generated by HP’s FIPS 140-2 certified ESKM key manager

• Self-identifying virtual media for retrieval of the appropriate key from the ESKM

• Periodic key change is handled completely transparently based on user ESKM policies

• Use of the AES encryption algorithm in Galois Counter Mode with a 256-bit key

• Implemented on the BackBox VTC platform – no overhead in NonStop processors

• Negligible impact on backup or restore transfer rates

• Completely transparent to NonStop backup applications and catalog management

• Supports key-per-device mode or key-per-volume mode

• Groups of cataloged tape volumes can be configured to be encrypted, with guarantee

that encryption is active, or uncataloged volumes encrypted by specific drive designation

This is the first virtual tape encryption solution for NonStop that does not involve proprietary key

management, algorithms or use of external encryption appliances. So you can be confident both

in satisfying your PCI audits and in on-going support by HP for the key management solution.

To discuss this or other backup solutions for NonStop, contact ETI-NET by telephone at 1-650-

348-4150 or by email at information@etinet.com.

TANDsoft Modernization Products Have New Australia/New Zealand Distributor

TANDsoft, Inc., is pleased to announce that its modernization products, the Enscribe-2-SQL and TMF-Audit Toolkits, will be distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Kapiti Technologies Ltd. Both products offer flexible, affordable alternatives to more expensive conversion products or manual conversion techniques. The Enscribe-2-SQL Toolkit supports both SQL/MP and SQL/MX and permits file-by-file incremental migration. The TMF-Audit Toolkit easily converts non-audited TMF files to audited TMF files. Its embedded Tookit Trace captures and analyzes Enscribe activity to construct TMF transaction boundaries for custom applications.

Kapiti also will distribute three other TANDsoft products. The OPTA2000 virtual clock and time-zone simulator allows multiple applications operating in a consolidated environment to each have their own virtual system clock or function in their own virtual time zone with date/time specifications that are different than that of the system clock. FileSync for automatic file synchronization and replication is used for disaster recovery, migrations, upgrades, and backups. Command Stream Replicator (CSR) automatically replicates DDL structure and other environment changes to target systems – changes and settings that normally are not replicated because they sit outside the TMF Audit Trail.

TANDsoft products require no application source code modifications, and all products are available for the entire family of HP NonStop servers. TANDsoft’s complete product suite was on display at BITUG’s Big SIG on December 2nd and at the French NonStop Chapter Meeting on December 6th.

TANDsoft’s “best of breed, best in price” philosophy offers highly competitive value for all TANDsoft solutions. Visit www.tandsoft.com, or call us at +1 (514) 695-2234. Visit Kapiti Technologies at www.kaptek.co.nz.

Availability Digest Probes National Australia Bank’s Multi-Day Outage

Talk about lack of business-continuity planning. Just last month, an erroneous batch-control file corrupted the transaction files that National Australia Bank sent nightly to other banks as a record of interbank transfers. As a result, the bulk of NAB’s services went down and remained down for days and in some cases longer. Customer accounts were frozen, cash was unavailable, credit cards were useless, and scheduled payments were not made. Although not affected as seriously, other banks were impacted.

So where were the backup files? What happened to the bank’s business-continuity planning? Why had the bank rejected a recommendation two years earlier to improve its backup procedures? The Availability Digest investigates this disastrous outage that serves to reinforce the necessity of comprehensive BCP.

Other topics in this month’s Digest include:

Availability – In virtualized environments, a single server failure can take down multiple virtual machines (VMs) and with them many critical applications. “Leveraging Virtualization for Availability” discusses the steps that virtualization vendors are taking to ensure high availability for their customers.

Product Reviews – the Attunity Integration Suite’s three components – Connect, Federate, and Streams – integrate disparate applications and data stores in order to implement important enterprise-wide functions.

Recommended Reading – Greg Livingston’s Business Continuity From A to Z discusses best BCP practices and explores the responsibilities of all stakeholders.

Published monthly, the Digest is free and lives at www.availabilitydigest.com. Our new “Useful Links” page is a great resource for use in the online research of products and services focused on high- and continuous availability and mission-critical systems. The Digest’s Continuous Availability Forum on LinkedIn is at 206 members and counting.

HP Announce NEW NonStop Training

The two new courses are as follows

1. Java Applications – Porting and Deployment

5 days with 30% Hands-On Lab work

- The audience can be wide ranging from System Designers, Application Developers and of course Support Technicians

- HF867S is the code you need or click here for the Datasheet

2. Eclipse – Development Environment

5 days with 30% Hands-On Lab work

- The audience can be wide ranging from System Analysts, Application Developers and of course Support Technicians

- HG754S is the code you need or click here for the Datasheet

This is the first announcement from HP UKI Education in some while and you are quite right to maybe feel a little neglected, it was however never our intention. I would like to think that this is the first step in re-building a relationship with the NonStop community, which in my opinion could be set for some long awaited growth. So, please look out for some more exciting news from HP Education in future issues which will include a discussion on the following

1. A University Styled Programme planned to provide career building education

2. The use of different delivery methods

a. Classroom Led

b. Online Led (real trainer over the internet)

– we call this RAIL (Remotely Assisted Instructor Led) or travel free training

– All the value delivered to your home or office with no hassle

c. Computer or Web Based Training – Someone talking at you

d. Webinars – Online seminars

If you do have any queries on the above or indeed anything in general please contact me jmcdermott@hp.com

Extend your HP NonStop S-Series life !!

Greatly improve your Return On Investment with S-Series New Life support Plans from TCM Solutions

TCM offers reliable, quality, and accredited support and supply of all S-Series hardware through 2017.

TCM has accredited, HP-trained NonStop Hardware Engineers, System Consultants and ITIL Service Managers.

TCM is proactive – with our comprehensive TCMAlert^TM service we’ll find the issue and fix it before incidents affect you.

Reduce the level of Hardware Incidents - our experience shows that utilising hot-spares standby systems reduces hardware failures in the field over traditional manufacturer cold-replacement strategies by around 20%.

TCM secures and assigns dedicated hot spare systems to all Customers – these can be held on Customer premises - this significantly reduces fix times.

You choose the level of service you require. With all levels of service, we will provide you with measurable benefits:

* Improved SLAs

* Lower Cost

* Considerable Investment savings

* Ability to sweat the asset

Save time and money with TCM’s Active Service Desk - single point of call. Within 15 minutes you’ll be speaking to hardware and system experts, not unskilled call-centre operatives.

TCM Solutions has been delivering Complete HP NonStop Managed Software and Hardware services to Major Financial Institutions for over 14 years.

TCM Solutions is certified to ISO9001:2008 Quality Management and itSMF ISO20000:2005 IT Service Management standards

Contact TCM Solutions today to see how we can start saving you money and help get more out of your existing investments – www.tcmsolutions.com, email info@tcmsolutions.com, call 01592 770081.

The complete solutions for S-Series and NS-Series Hardware and Software support.

Tandemworld & LinkedIN

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

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

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

Tandemworld within EMEA

+44 (0) 20 8304 7979

info@tandemworld.net

www.tandemworld.net

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