The report card above is the top level of a Ban Bottlenecks report. It is the beginning of a process which answers the question: “Is my system ready for the business that’s coming?“  Each grade and link above is the starting point of a discussion with our performance experts.

Dedicated NonStop performance and capacity experts.

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

Implementing effective, disciplined, proactive capacity management programs.

Last month I made a brief reference to the HP strategy update to be given by the company’s new CEO, Leo Apotheker. There’s a lot of anticipation over what it will address and while I suggested in my last article that it was too early to speculate, some early indications have already surface.

The HP board of directors is being restructured with new members already named, and the first new products under Apotheker’s stewardship announced. Not surprisingly, leveraging the webOS, which HP gained with the purchase of Palm, a new line of tablet PCs (and shortly phones, and even a new PC all supporting webOS) - the TouchPad.

At the center of all that’s being discussed preparatory to the HP strategy update (expected early in March, but on March 2^nd when Apple is expected to announce updates to the iPad, is shifting the focus away from the pure hardware play – in particular, PC’s and Printers. Look to more energy in support of software, services, and integration!

As I have been told by several sources this will anchor the new HP – but don’t rule out Servers (including the more complex hybrid variety), Storage, and Networking continuing to play an important role, or fail to see how quickly Dave Donatelli consolidates his position at the top of the HP technology tree in the post-Ann Livermore era!

This is worth watching of course as it is being rumored that Ann Livermore will join the board (is it already a done deal?) and take up the post of Vice Chairman. It’s also worth watching as this is the group where Business Critical Servers (BCS), of which NonStop is a part, resides and where the future of NonStop will be determined.

But the purpose of this article is not to dwell on this possible outcome as there will be ample opportunity to cover it more accurately in next month’s update to the running commentary. What has been the focus of my attention this month has been Product Roadmaps and the upcoming SATUG user event.

In the March / April issue of The Connection, there will be published a feature article on my perspective on the topic of product roadmaps. Readers of my blog, Real Time View may recall that in the January 11, 2011 post, “Product Roadmaps! Still required?” I posed the question of whether we value product roadmaps today as highly as we once did.

I also observed how at user events, product roadmap presentations continue to draw the biggest crowd and of how it’s not uncommon for us to first witness a change in direction or the embracement of a new technology, during a roadmap presentation. Perhaps a little less glamorous than what used to take place on the main stage of ITUG events of the past but still of vital importance to all users relying on the NonStop platform for support of mission critical applications. 

I continue to have a lot of respect for the product managers within HP’s NonStop Enterprise Division (NED) and the time they spend with NonStop customers identifying user requirements that gives them the requisite “feature boxes” which we see today sprinkled liberally throughout the product roadmaps.

Perhaps there’s more that could be done to market the growing NonStop “stack” to a wider community, in particular, but still a recognizable and valuable pursuit much-appreciated by the NonStop community. Yes, we still value product roadmaps as highly as we have done in years past, but we are a little wiser and have become more selective in what we consider as being important!

To drive home the value I see in product roadmaps, I made the comparison between product roadmaps, and the road maps we take with us (whether in hardcopy or as presented by modern GPS systems) whenever we venture out on the highways and journey to places that just aren’t well-known to us and where we may not be clear about the route!

Check out this feature when you get your copy of the March / April issue of The Connection. And yes, there’s a connection to the presentation I have been creating for the upcoming SATUG user event to be held in a few days’ time. Rather than being an official portrayal of what to expect from NED, my SATUG presentation will draw from my own observations of the past year and pull content directly from these articles.

In preparing for this presentation, and building on the earlier work referenced above, there have been two additional posts to the Real Time view where I present my case for my next three wishes for the NonStop platform. And it follows my earlier thoughts on this topic that first appeared in the October issue of this e/Newsletter, Tandemworld.Net.

These additional two posts develop the storyline include the posting of November 30, 2010 ‘Nothing seems to last …” followed a few months later by the posting of February 13^th, 2011 “Three years on, and three more wishes!”  Coming almost three years to the day of my posting of February 12, 2008 “‘My Wish’ for NS Blades” I took time to critique my own performance in terms of what has transpired over the past three years before assembling my new list of top three priorities for future NonStop development.

Perhaps the most important conclusion that I make from the work I have done on product roadmaps and that I will cover (in part) in my SATUG presentation is that NonStop is rapidly becoming a pure software play, that NonStop will come to mean a lot more than just a combination of hardware with the operating systems (where the  NonStop “stack” will be even more widely promoted than ever before), and that other organizations within HP will begin to leverage some of the NonStop fundamentals and incorporate what we traditionally thought of as a Tandem, into the broader HP product offerings out of BCS.

The message of commoditization carries with it an end-game where NonStop will be relying on exactly the same server blades package as every other group within BCS and where it will become increasingly more difficult to figure out what’s in the data center by looking at the boxes – a client recently emailed my how there’s little to identify a NonStop server when it is shipped as a blade’s server!

Then again, I am excited by the implications and where this could all be headed as I am excited by the opportunities this will present to solutions and infrastructure vendors alike. For now though, I will leave further discussion on this subject for a later feature and turn my attention to the slides I will take to South Africa. And to all those planning on attending, I look forward to catching up with every one of you!

Richard Buckle

Founder and CEO

Pyalla Technologies, LLC

Email:                                             

richard@pyalla-technologies.com

Establishing an access control system that restricts access based on user’s need-to-know, is an important PCI DSS requirement.

CSP PassPort provides enhanced security on HP NonStop™ servers by permitting a much higher degree of control over user access and activity than is possible with Safeguard. PassPort controls user access to programs and restricts the user to specific commands based upon their profile and can provide audit reporting capability down to key stroke level.

CSP PassPort can control the access of each alias differently, even for the same underlying user ID or Safeguard alias; thereby offering superior control over individual user by granting or denying access to individual subcommands or functions within a subsystem, program or application

Apart from the benefits of terminal and commands restrictions, an access matrix facility is also included, which can be used to limit access to specific days of the week or even times of the day

Key Features:

·       Sophisticated security controls beyond those offered by Safeguard

·       User and Group profiles can control process priority and available CPUs for any process the user or group can create

·       Supports Node to Node communication

·       Password quality checks that can be enforced

·       Each individual person having access to the SUPER ID can have a different list of commands that are allowed / restricted.  No need to know the SUPER ID password.

·       Individual user accountability for shared and powerful IDs

·       Commands entered from within the system utilities (e.g. SQLCI, SCF, FUP, etc.) can be controlled and Audited

·       Detailed auditing of every keystroke and response sent to and from a terminal for a specific user or set of users.

Please contact Sales@cspsecurity.com for more information on these products or any questions you may have about NonStop system security.

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