I have spoken with several NonStop customers over the past few months who have asked me the same question about parts availability for the S Series.  There seems to be some confusion about how Marshall Resources acquires and maintains parts and how HP’s end of production will affect S Series availability.  Our exclusive source of Tandem hardware is from the End User who has decommissioned systems.  We are not tied in any way to HP’s manufacturing, and in fact, have always acquired more parts than what could be consumed by a shrinking number of customers on that platform.  I have been asked by many of you how long we could guarantee S Series parts availability.  The reality is that there is no end date for how long we could provide storage, testing, and availability of quality parts.  The demand for these services is the only factor that determines how long we offer these products.  In fact, we no longer have demand for TNSII and TXP parts, but we do have some for our own sentimental reasons.  Please allow me to explain further about Marshall Resources, and at the same time I will try and provide some helpful information as it relates to the general condition of the NonStop maintenance industry.

Yes indeed, Marshall Resources does maintain the world’s largest inventory of second hand Tandem / HP NonStop Computer hardware.  We have our primary refurbishing, repair, and testing facility in North Carolina, USA.  We also have a facility in Frankfurt, Germany with a large stock of parts and test systems.  We also have storage locations in France, England, and Singapore.  The purpose of these remote facilities is to support our global hardware maintenance business. 

Currently, the demand for S-Series maintenance is very high.  In 2012, HP is approaching end of life on many S Series components.  Even with some parts and CPUs extending EOL through 2013, all S-Series Users will have systems with some or a lot of components out of HP support sometime next year.   Many customers are not in a position to upgrade these systems to Integrity systems or Blades, so interest in third party support is very high at this time.  Marshall Resources continues to increase its resources and as it does so, this adds to our economies of scale and therefore response times improve and allow for better pricing and levels of service.  This interest in third party solutions has also helped us with an increase in inquiries for NS-Integrity service, which we are also able to offer.  We have already helped many customers make considerable savings in the NonStop hardware maintenance area.  We would be delighted to work with you to demonstrate what saving we can make for you.

Availability:

n: The ability to process transactions correctly with excellent service levels.

Real time isn’t good enough.

When a real-time alert goes off, it may be too late.  Some things can’t be fixed in real-time.  That’s why Ban Bottlenecks specializes in “future-time” analysis, with a 3 to 6 month look-ahead by our analysts.  They understand your business, the business demand, how your systems respond to that demand, and where it’s all going.

A service and a discipline

Call for a free evaluation!

HP did not catch a similar super surfer wave.

Apple’s new 500,000 square foot iCloud data center is filled to the brim with Unix and Linux servers, ne’er a HP NonStop. I don’t know that Apple ever utilized a HP NonStop, the point is – it’s not going to add the platform now.  

In fact, due to its uniquely proprietary platform, annual software license fees are sharply increasing. Surely, this unplanned expense is not lost on you special IT decision makers (personal disclosure: I am not one of you now but have previously held this enviable corporate position and associated responsibility). This one’s for you folks, or should I say your already overflowing plates and over stretched meat dollar.  

There are a couple of ways to reduce/minimize/stop the hemorrhaging of your NonStop budget. The most obvious being outsourcing. For those of you that have already done this, I hope you have negotiated good rates for specialist skills that might kill your budget when you perform upgrades. Multi-tiered skillset pricing for IT outsourcing has been very helpful to IBM’s bottom line success. It has been equally inversely damaging to IT budgets and decision maker’s careers who did not budget accordingly.

I think not.

Decouple and re-engineer business logic and processing flows? Compliment the proprietary logic with modified existing solutions? This is a very difficult choice within any IT organization, and of course costly. Weigh the alternative.   

You can outsource a re-write of the entire platform and move 30 year old code to an open one. This is being done every day in India. Or you could consider evaluating the option of developing a functional equivalent to your NonStop on a lower cost platform, removing outdated code and function, and adding process improvements.  Indian IT outsourcing is getting more expensive, the lower end is moving to Malaysia. 

The clock is ticking; Cinderella is racing to her crystal carriage already less one slipper.

There exists a pool of brilliant, very experienced American Tandem software developers (not just good coders) that could possibly be coaxed out of retirement for a reunion tour.  These are the folks that wrote the original Tandem OS code in many cases. They know the logic inside out. These are the real deal folks, Tandem NonStop engineering rock stars.

I’ve spoken with a few of these wizards and they would love the opportunity to form a band.  I would be the lead singer, of course.  With 20 -30 years IT experience each I’d bet we could get tuned up in short order. We would build a model to rival the cost of Indian outsourcing of HP NonStop re-engineering. To be clear, we are not offering a re-write, not modernization, but a complete process re-engineering of your HP NonStop environment.  The result will be a perfectly synchronized open platform harmony that will be capable of running virtually over the cloud, good vibrations.  

Call me a fool, but every time I bring up the idea I get cheered onstage for a reminiscent song and dance, surf’s up!

This might be your golden opportunity to leave the ball as a princess and live happily ever after sans the threat of the pumpkin.  The princess may need to leave her legacy footwear behind this time, too costly to locate and recover the source (pun intended). Why not replace it altogether?

If you would seriously like to discuss an evaluation and preliminary scope of the effort to dismiss your HP NonStop environment and replace it with a new strategic alternative, please contact me.