NonStop - A Running Commentary – January, 09

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author
and shouldn’t be viewed as reflecting any views
of his current or past employer 

Last year, it seemed that whenever I wrote an opinion article on user groups, or on the imminent arrival of commoditization (software and infrastructure as well as hardware), or even about solutions providers (ACI specifically) these topics generated the most interest. Now that the New Year has arrived, and the times have so radically changed from when I began writing for this newsletter, I see no reason to change the focus. And there is a common thread present across all three topics.

With solutions vendors, there is an increased user demand to reduce costs and to simplify, often pushing them to embrace standards and open source. All while minimizing risk! As for vendors like HP, wringing out every imaginable cost remains fundamental for every approach they take, and at the same time maximizing technology and product re-use! When it comes to user groups, the communities are intently focused on staying employable and on developing marketable skills. All while avoiding marginal “niches” and improving individual productivity better than just about any other field of endeavor!

The software and services companies, on the other hand, could just as easily be quoted as having said “the IT industry is not unlike the auto business that was once led by a few large, integrated, manufacturers, but could become dominated by commodity and standard platforms with reduced energy-consumption needs.” In other words, as the auto industry struggles to reduce the number of models they make, while switching to power sources other than the many variants of the internal combustion engine they rely on today, so too is the IT industry pursuing consolidation on fewer servers with ever decreasing Operating System (OS) and infrastructure options.  

Last year I wrote about the plans for NonStop being supported as part of the then-upcoming bladed architecture product-line. I briefly wrote about the potential upside from a deep port of SASH that would complement access to NonStop from open-source clients with a powerful run-time environment put right on top of NonStop. Yet I also gave HP good marks for reigning in the potential explosion of product offerings that could have developed following the acquisition of Compaq – and neatly sidestepping the deep-seated problems so bedeviling the auto industry today. And this is incredibly important for the user community.

While most of us do not like to see our options reduced and our choices limited, when it comes to the basic platforms themselves, consolidation is not a bad situation to face. After all, at the very core of all products are the chips and with the competition between Intel, AMD and IBM Power showing no signs of letting-up, there’s critical mass at this level to ensure competitive products continue to make it to market.

However, today’s solutions are based on an up-ended triangle (or pyramid) with the widest choice existing at the interface between the user and technology. And this is the right model for the IT industry. The auto industry would love to be in a market where they competed on the basis of essentially subjective and somewhat cosmetic features – as a commercial by one of the Japanese manufacturers suggested a few years back, even at a dealer’s showroom, it still wasn’t too late to change the vehicle’s color! In IT, perhaps we will see the development of support for simple templates so that changing interfaces, programming languages, and underlying infrastructure may be as easy as checking a couple of boxes within the template.

What was driving the GM bosses was the shift from being solely reliant on propulsion from the ever-reliable internal combustion engine, to battery-powered engines in both hybrid and native modes, and the need to develop core competencies in battery technology. In fact, one industry leader mused how the future of the automobile may transition away from old style heavy manufacturers to a smaller core of manufacturers owning the best battery technology. I am not so sure of this eventuality but I couldn’t rule it out entirely with the current leadership all lacking deep pockets these days. Should the auto industry, in the coming years, adopt the up-ended triangle model, then anchoring it will be a much smaller group of companies and those with the best energy-usage solutions could end being the only survivors.

Solution vendors will need to be very careful about favoring anyone of these technology companies – there will be nothing to be gained from siding with one over the other as even here, there will be no guarantees of longevity and customers will always call the shots. After all, as I have written often, the customer is king! And leveraging the colossal investments these technology companies will be making in their pursuit of our business will compel solutions vendors to keep their options open – after all, tying a solution to just one data base or to just one run-time environment doesn’t make sense these days with the underlying chips as powerful as they are today.

While I applaud HP for the steps they took after the acquisition of Compaq, and I am pleased to see NonStop depicted prominently on the product roadmaps that I have seen, I also get the sense that what we will see in the future may not be what we are familiar with today. OS’s with significant user patronage today may find functionality that differentiates them from other implementations creep into more broadly-accepted OS’s as features.

Notwithstanding something extraordinary happening, OpenVMS, zOS, and even NonStop could fall into this category, as features are leveraged by those responsible for Linux, Windows, and Unix. Perhaps in combinations - zOS with zLinux, NonStop with Linux or HP-UX, etc. as larger system complexes take on more hybrid appearances. But this cannot be interpreted as any lessening of the investment in NonStop by any means – and should be welcomed by most users of NonStop. After all, having the option to run the most crucial of business-critical applications on NonStop will remain valuable and if the ability to do so becomes transparent, which I think over time it will, then sensitivity to maintaining NonStop within the data center may be lessened significantly.

The coming year will hold many surprises and the economy will turn the tables on many of our plans. Commoditization and energy conservation will only grow in importance. Capital budgets will disappear and we will face doing a whole lot more just to stay in business with a lot less. Legislation, and regulatory mandates, are all going to take a huge toll on what we can and cannot do – with security topping the list. After all, if the auto industry is watching the computer business with interest, and perhaps a little envy, then it’s because we have been effective in minimizing risk, embracing commoditization, and driven up productivity!

Richard Buckle

Real Time View blog:           www.itug-connection.blogspot.com