NonStop - A Running Commentary – March, 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

Over the course of any given week I manage to read a lot of publications. These vary, and include those providing coverage on general news, like Time and Newsweek, as well as on business, like Fortune. And I also read some of the general IT publications like InformationWeek.  I have a number of electronic publications that I also peruse, and then there are the car and motorcycle publications I’ve always found time to read cover to cover. USA Today and the Financial Times can get a thorough read but only when I am on the road – and over coffee at Starbucks, if someone leaves a copy of the New York Times lying around, I will grab a section or two.

Most recently, I picked up a new magazine focused on high-performance sports cars – in particular, those that develop more than 600 horsepower. Flipping the pages I stopped and read the editorial and I found it highly amusing. Clearly, this is not a magazine for the general public but even so, the editor was having a little fun with his readership. What was the topic of the column was demographics – more specifically, who the car manufacturers believe buy these highly specialized cars.

From the car manufacturers came the usual statistics – high income, mid to late 40s, mostly male drivers, etc. But the editor thought statistics like this didn’t tell the whole story. Rather than running through lists like this they proposed new categories like “shows strong aversion to stop signs, red lights, and speed bumps,” and “feels national speed limit should be 120 mph,” or even “experiences frequent interaction with law enforcement officials!”

And it had me thinking – how would HP respond to a similar question – who do they believe buy highly specialized NonStop servers? I would expect to see a list that included market segments like Financial Services, Telco, Healthcare, etc. But what does this really tell us other than there is most likely a selection of application solutions available for NonStop addressing that market segment. So, what new categories do I think should be included?

For starters, there’s the reluctant first-timer “after the merger, we were told we needed to switch to NonStop,” as well as the sandbagged first timer who never saw it coming “the new guy had us switch to NonStop!” Then there is the old guy in the corner “we’ve only ever run a NonStop,” and finally, the ever-popular contrarian “we would never let IBM into our shop!” With these categories described here, the picture that we would get is of a community that understands the value proposition of NonStop and selected an application from a well-known vendor, yet remains quite proud of their association with a product that is as unique as it is highly specialized.

NonStop as a web server? NonStop as a data warehouse? NonStop in every data center? NonStop for the home? The breadth of choice and the variety in deployments only adds to the “dialogue” cutting across the community. Who’s coming to NonStop? Who’s moving away? Who’s upgrading to the new models? And then these days, there’s probably no more frequently asked question than “what is happening in the BASE24 community?”

Did ACI jump ship too soon? There are many exchanges now across forums and blogs about BASE24 running on Blades as users in the America’s and Europe complete migrations. The banks that have upgraded aren’t second or third tier banks but are among the biggest in the world – and the responses I have received are positive. Some irritating teething problems were encountered at one bank but in general, smooth transitions. Here at GoldenGate we moved our product to Blades and experienced no problems doing the migration.

For many years the concern of ACI was that NonStop had become too expensive and would fail to penetrate new markets. There was also the concerns that little marketing was done that helped ACI sales teams – they were being left to do it all on their own. But with the support we now see by HP management for Blades, and with the much lower price points, perhaps these arguments are mute? Did ACI not see blades coming, or were they blissfully ignoring it after all the years working with NonStop? Was it a case of ACI, having seen it all before, not being able to believe NonStop could change it’s game?

Perhaps another category could be added to my list, with what we have seen at ACI, the “we just have to try something different?” Not out of any disenchantment with the NonStop product but simply that, with the change of leadership at ACI, perhaps they could play one vendor against the other and land some development dollars. And I really can’t blame them for that – in today’s economy I see solution providers routinely evolving their tactics to attract as much development funding as they can.

Could ACI return to HP and to NonStop? I wouldn’t say this will happen any time soon or with any marketing hoopla, but then again, does it ever make sense to forgo the attention of one major vendor in favor of its nearest competitor? ACI is well into its second year with IBM and, with only a handful (less than six, as best as I can tell) of BASE24 eps customers on the IBM mainframe with none, that I have heard of, being former NonStop customers, its becoming harder for ACI to view the strategy as a roaring success. Some users in Asia Pac / Japan are considering the switch and there’s anxieties within HP management as a result – but overall globally, it’s been a less-than-stellar performance by the joint ACI / IBM sales teams. And for a very good reason!

Recently I have produced a couple of blog postings: Tough Neighborhood! and Knives in the Library! that looked at the heritage of NonStop, and its continued relevance versus the offerings from other vendors. I blogged that  “perhaps our roots in Tandem have given us less tolerance for the messages of other platforms. Perhaps our patience for alternate solutions has weakened with time and experience. “Almost as available” as a NonStop? Operating in “near” real time? Scalable as other MPP architectures! How meaningless this all sounds to those of us familiar with NonStop.”

Whether it’s someone new to the NonStop community following a merger perhaps, or someone with a lot more experience and who has seen it all and has only ever run NonStop, the love-affair with NonStop can be a very difficult hurdle for solution providers to get over. Most of them eventually end up working with both old and new communities – there’s value in maintaining a dual-path strategy with the economic climate that exists today.  NonStop is a very specialized product that will never be marketed to the global IT community, yet it remains one of those technologies that users consider replacing with border-line fear and trepidation!

Solution providers have every right to try things and to develop additional partnerships. And it isn’t always easy understanding the demographics. But when it comes to NonStop never underestimate the resilience of the community or the healthy skepticism that exists when anything else is proposed.

Now wait a minute! NonStop in every data center? Nonstop for the home?

Maybe not quite yet – but if HP ever drops NonStop onto an X86 platform, then just stand back! Deep with all of us who have been associated with NonStop over the years is the nagging suspicion that there’s still a much bigger marketplace for NonStop – it’s been a heck of a ride so far and perhaps the ride is far from over after all. Perhaps 600+ horsepower may not be so narrow a focused group and perhaps we all can make use of it and get to appreciate the advantages!

Richard Buckle

HP – ITUG:            Board of Directors (2000 – 2006)    Chairman (2004 & 2005)

IBM – SHARE:      Board of Directors (2007 – 2008)

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