Tandemworld eNewsletter for January 2013

Gold Sponsor is

Silver Sponsor is

Tandemworld Newsletter for January 2013

I would like to say wow! What a year! But looking back at my musings of previous years, these are the same words I have used before.  Simply repeating them seems to lack a little imagination, considering I usually work hard on projecting creativity. And yet, as I look back through the posts and features I wrote in 2012, it truly has been quite the year, one I would categorize as having been challenging and productive.

Perhaps the stand out item for me has been the NonStop community support in evidence at user group meetings and events worldwide. I had the good fortune to participate at last year’s HP Discover in Las Vegas as well as the GTUG event in Dresden but just as important, I exchanged emails with community members who attended other events, including those organized by the larger solutions vendors. The presence of the NonStop community was hard to miss and it’s a credit to all who participated that they made sure the NonStop banner flew as proudly as it always has flown.

And we need to keep talking about Nonstop. We need to make sure all we come in contact connect the dots properly – if you want the industry’s best platform for running mission-critical applications, deploy the HP NonStop system! It can be frustrating at times when, as a community, we witness firsthand HP seemingly “holding its punches” on NonStop, arguing strongly that as a portfolio company it can’t be seen favoring one of its product lines over another – HP has a lot of strong-minded personnel aligned behind each product and downplaying the contribution of any one group would be extremely risky.

Yet, the dots continue to be connected and NonStop continues to prevail but what are these dots? Everyone attending HP Discover 2012 who sat in on HP CEO, Meg Whitman’s keynote presentation would have heard her acknowledge that “Clouds, Social, Mobile and Big Data are all contributing to further shifts in the tectonic plates underpinning IT,” and of how these would be the key areas where HP development groups would be focusing their energies.

The escalating usage of mobile devices, the frequent interaction with social media (and often from the mobile devices), the accumulation and storage of information that arises out of these interactions – unstructured data, for the most part, and yet of value to companies everywhere – as part of Big Data frameworks, and the increasing reliance on the Cloud as a low cost resource to handle all the data being generated and needed by the business analytics pursuits companies today rely upon to remain competitive.

We need to keep talking, but just as importantly we need to ensure our audience understands that we are talking about NonStop with respect to making certain that these dots can be connected. Mission-critical applications generate transactional data that gives a wealth of context for the otherwise free-form data that flows from devices and often senses – if we cannot relate it to specific customer events it’s a nice background noise, but hardly one that can lead us to uncover new and important patterns.

In the last three musings I have written about Big Data and of how the NonStop vendor community is already at work supporting Big Data. Some vendors are even beginning to use Big Data for greater operational clarity that helps keep costs under control while other vendors are making the data integration aspects easier to implement.  In September’s musings I wrote of how there was a lot going on for the NonStop community when it comes to Clouds but there’s also a lot happening when it comes to Big Data – it’s how companies will be able to better compete in the marketplace to provide business managers with even greater insight into all that is happening.  

However, it was in the October’s musings that I also noted how, for many CIOs, it’s apparent that many industry experts seem only too keen to write-off the contribution being made by NonStop, even when they reference transaction processing. At the time of writing I asked when was the last time you saw a chart or grid referencing NonStop, even within the analysis for the upper end of the niche marketplace for mission-critical platforms?  Yes, we need to keep talking, even as we need to encourage executives within HP to be more accommodating of all that NonStop has achieved and continues to represent.

This year I have written a number of opinion papers for Attunity on the subject of Big Data. They are not the only vendor looking at Big Data – readers who follow my posts to the web publication realtime.ir.com should recall my post of September 21, 2012, Big Data Drives Monitoring Changes! where Prognosis has begun to exploit Big Data frameworks for even finer-grained perspectives on what is occurring on a NonStop system. However, the opinion papers written on what Attunity is pursuing have looked at the important presence NonStop has when it comes to being a source for core transactional data, important for any meaningful analytics to be performed.

In April, 2012, Attunity released my first opinion paper, Improving HP NonStop Data Movement: On-Premise And In The Cloud, where I wrote of how the tide is turning, and coming from Attunity there is an innovative data replication software solution that will prove valuable to CIOs everywhere. This was followed a little later in the year by the opinion paper HP NonStop Transactional Data: An important ingredient for Big Data Success, and it too can be downloaded directly from the Attunity web site. Shortly, a follow on piece to this most recent opinion paper will become available from the Attunity web site – look for HP NonStop Transactional Data: Critical for Meaningful Big Data. We all need to keep talking about NonStop and be more vocal on NonStop being an integral part of the line connecting the many dots now anchoring HP’s strategy.

As I wrapped up the November musings, I remarked on how all too often, as we go about our business, we can often overlook the importance of telling those around of us what we are doing. I then asked whether we have relaxed of late and let up on championing NonStop? Have we been too concerned about our own livelihoods? Have we been more concerned about making it into retirement?

Perhaps I should just wrap this up with the comments made by Attunity VP, Business Development and Corporate Strategy, Itamar Ankorion, who in the midst of explaining to me for the first time just how important getting NonStop involved in decisions about Big Data, suggested that, “it’s time for companies, particularly those running mission-critical application on HP NonStop systems, to get on the Big Data train or get left behind.” And of course, getting on a Big Data train will only happen if we take the message ourselves to our CIOs. We just have to talk more and push our agendas just as every other party within a business is aggressively doing today.

Yes, wow! It has been another very big year! And that’s still news that needs to be conveyed as far and as wide as we can carry it …

Richard Buckle
Founder and CEO

Pyalla Technologies, LLC
Email:             richard@pyalla-technologies.com

www.nuwave-tech.com 

Gravic recently attended the BITUG BIG SIG in London and the FTUG French-Speaking NonStop Users Meeting in Paris and presented its case study “One Bank’s March Towards Active/Active (A Strong Reminder Why Successfully Testing Your Business Continuity Plan Actually Matters).” This presentation is based on the case study that led to Gravic winning one of the HP and Intel 2012 Mission-Critical Innovation Awards. If you missed our presentation and would like a copy, or have any questions about how Shadowbase can assist you in solving your business continuity, data replication, zero downtime migrations, or other real-time data integration needs, please contact us. Congratulations to Rick Stather of Bank of England and Qui Hung Le of Société Générale for winning our Kindle prizes!

To read more about our recent award, please click here.

To read an article based on the award submission, please click here.

To see an interview video on Gravic and the award, please click here.

We would all like to see the message of NonStop promoted more strongly, perhaps even in advertisements. Failing that, however, it’s still very important for all us to champion NonStop and to ensure it plays a part in the many new initiatives we pursue. How? Read the whole story at 'comForteLounge'

There is also a very lively discussion going on in the 'Fools for NonStop' group on LinkedIn. Join the debate and share your ideas.

NEW: HP NonStop [Tandem] Security Group on LinkedIn - join the discussion.

Our two industry renowned books on HP NonStop Security are now available in electronic format through the Kindle store on Amazon.

 Download the electronic version of our best selling books "HP NonStop Server Security" and "Securing HP NonStop Servers in an Open Systems World" copy today!

Considered "must have" reference books for system managers, IT auditors, security staff, HP NonStop consultants & services professionals, you can now have the convenience of two top-industry reference books at your fingertips.

Here's what one reviewer said " Easy to follow -- & masterfully written -- by the HP NonStop Security guru's themselves: XYPRO Technology Corp!." Click here to download your copy.

Barry Forbes

VP of Sales & Marketing

XYPRO Technology Corporation

www.xypro.com

Click on the following link to directly go to the TOP Tip #2 video … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfAf-Da1Q1Y

We invite you to browse around in the comForte YouTube channel … http://www.youtube.com/user/comforte21

If you have questions about any of the videos or if something does not quite work please contact Thomas Gloerfeld at 't.gloerfeld@comforte.com' 

NEW: HP NonStop [Tandem] Security Group on LinkedIn - join the discussion.

More information is available in this SQLXPress Technical Note, or by contacting XYPRO Technology, the global reseller of Merlon Software solutions. Contact a XYPRO representative for more information.

TANDsoft Customers Use OPTA2000 Virtual Clock and Time-Zone Simulator with Both Major Apps and NonStop Subsystems

Third-party applications and customer-developed applications aren’t the only programs that benefit from the OPTA2000 virtual clock and time-zone simulator. NonStop subsystems can take advantage of OPTA2000 support as well. Many TANDsoft customers purchase OPTA2000 to simulate clock time and time-zones on a wide variety of NonStop subsystems. They include TACL, NetBatch, EMS, ENFORM, Spooler, OSS, VHS, FTP, and Pathway.

Here’s an example: A major U.S. bank uses OPTA2000 to run multiple global NetBatch environments from its central data center. Each NetBatch environment runs in its own virtual time zone and is conscious of the GMT offset and standard time/Daylight Saving Time transition schedules for its time zone. The NetBatch jobs are responsible for preparing global market-closing reports that must represent the local time with which the reports are associated. Though NetBatch jobs are run in their respective virtual time zones, a system operator can monitor the NetBatch job schedules according to that operator’s local clock.

OPTA2000 is a virtual clock and time-zone simulator that is user-friendly, easily installed, cost-effective, and requires no application modifications. It uses intercept technology to allow multiple applications operating in a consolidated environment to each have its own virtual system clock or to function in its own virtual time zone with date/time specifications that are different than that of the system clock. For time-zone simulation, the libraries create virtual times that are offset from a system’s actual time by an amount expressed as a deviation from GMT time (Greenwich Mean Time). For clock simulation, the virtual times can be offset to whatever time is required for the testing, maintenance, etc., of an application. A single system can host thousands of applications. OPTA2000 supports all applications (user, HP, and major third-party apps, including BASE24) on the HP BladeSystem as well as on NonStop S-Series and Itanium servers.

TANDsoft’s “best of breed, best in price” philosophy offers highly competitive value for all TANDsoft solutions. In addition to OPTA2000, they include: Command Stream Replicator, which 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; FileSync for automatic file synchronization and replication; the Enscribe-2-SQL and TMF-Audit Toolkits, which offer flexible, affordable alternatives to more expensive conversion products or manual conversion techniques; and OPTA-Trace, a real-time tracing and debugging utility. New to OPTA-Trace is an early-warning feature that detects the approach of a stack limit and sounds the alarm to prevent a stack overflow.

TANDsoft products require no application source-code modifications and are available for all HP NonStop servers. Free trials are available. For information about TANDsoft solutions, contact Jack Di Giacomo at +1 (514) 695-2234. Our Enscribe to SQL Migration Forum on LinkedIn is at 149 members and counting. www.tandsoft.com.

TANDsoft will be represented at two upcoming regional events - N2TUG (the North Texas and Oklahoma NonStop Users Group on February 21st and the SunTUG/Connect Florida Sunshine Summit on March 8th.


 

Find out more about us at www.tandemworld.net

www.tandemworld.net

+44 (0) 20 8304 7979

We would like to thank the sponsors of the Janaury 2013 Newsletter

Gold Sponsor

Silver Sponsor

To enquire about Sponsorship opportunities for the Tandemworld Newsletter please click here.

Current Subscribers 14076

Our company, Tandemworld, accepts no liability for the content of this email, or for the consequences of any actions taken on the basis of the information provided.
To Unsubscribe or Change your Subscription Please click here