Looking out at the western sky there’s quite an amusing scene; in one area the Canadian Geese are flying their regular southerly route while others are passing them, heading back up north, yet others are flying west to east – days with very cold wintery conditions are routinely interspersed with much warmer weather and the geese simply look confused. With no consensus in evidence, it seems that flying in any direction is appropriate.

Seeking directions is important to anyone in IT, as the downside from mistakes becomes all too visible all too quickly – imagine being among the last to buy Wang, or Data General or even Sun computers! Sometimes, it is the input from well-placed executives that influence us the most, and oftentimes it’s just a casual conversation with a trusted salesman. At other times, it’s a brief exchange with a consultant. No matter who provides the information, our decision to elect on what is communicated always comes down to equal measures of our own understanding of the market together with our confidence in the credibility of the source.

A short time ago Justin Simonds, Master Technologist at Hewlett-Packard, posted a comment to the LinkedIn group, Tandem User Group, in response to the discussion that began with the posting of discussion A twofold test ... with no prizes awarded (unfortunately) but of value all the same ... Within this comment were a couple of pretty solid observations about NonStop and the direction Simonds expected to see the new NonStop X head – in terms of both application usage as well as vertical markets. Speaking for himself, he pointed out, he mused on what he could see eventuating for NonStop X and I will leave readers to read the complete comment themselves. However, here’s a very brief and illuminating summary:

Some of the items here may come as a surprise to the NonStop community, but to anyone who was present at 2014 NonStop Advanced Technical Boot Camp, almost all of these vendors and products formed the basis for presentations, either in part or in whole. Much of the above too has been covered in posts to the NonStop community blog, Real Time View, in particular, to the post For NonStop users, this is our season! as well as Niches open and niches close and yet the versatile NonStop prevails! And yes, some of the vendors interviewed at the time for the above posts have been referenced again in Simonds’ comments so the excuse to revisit some of those vendors seemed only reasonable and indeed, fair.

“When the idea to do a very deep port of Node.js to NonStop X was first discussed internally, we knew that it would be a very complex undertaking but with the help we received from HP, it has the potential for opening entirely new doors to NonStop X sales,” said InfraSoft Managing Director, Peter Shell. “NonStop X is a new system and with our Node.js product – what we have elected to call bomBora – we are adding a brand new, very modern, development platform that we are sure will come as a surprise to even the most fervent devotees of JavaScript.” While the focus will be on helping HP to attract new solutions to the NonStop X system, in time there will be users who will be influenced internally, I suspect, to look at programming NonStop X in JavaScript – and no, this is not a language solely for those just wanting to serve up web pages.

I am hearing a lot more about the tighter integration between NonStop and Linux and according to one very highly placed NonStop executive I interviewed recently, such hybrid configurations are being tested ever so quietly by current NonStop users. For those with solutions dependent upon Pathway and indeed Pathway/ACS in a follow-up discussion with InfraSoft’s Shell, he confirmed that with the InfraSoft’s product maRunga, supporting the reach of Pathway into Linux is something we expect to see develop real traction with NonStop users pursuing hybrid NonStop – Linux configurations.

As for Simonds’ comments about NonStop in a cloud and about OpSol, I was able to pull more information from OmniPayments, Inc. President, Yash Kapadia. “Our motivation to consider offering OmniPayments as a SaaS from out of a Cloud service built around NonStop was very straightforward,” said Yash. “When you sell to markets that are extremely price sensitive you need to have a variety of product offerings and having the option to sell OmniPayments out of the Cloud allowed us to go into deals with a very low entry price.”

According to Yash, who is very bullish about what he has accomplished to date, “We can support a customer completely from our Cloud offering or simply add our Cloud offering as a D/R site. Furthermore, our customers can use our Cloud offering simply for a pilot implementation as they await the delivery of their own NonStop system.” And yes, Yash was quick to add, “We had work to do to satisfy the ‘provisioning’ of a customer’s OmniPayments configuration but as our payments products are based on SOA, the inherent application virtualization on HP NonStop made this task easier. What was the real challenge was the pricing model we would take to market and we are pleased to find our models are proving attractive at this time.”

Finally, it only made sense to check in with the folks at WebAction, the last vendor on Simonds’ list that I have referenced above. After they too read the comments, they responded by acknowledging how, “At WebAction we agree with Justin that there are verticals where NonStop X should make it easier for HP to establish a greater presence,” said WebAction Cofounder and EVP, Sami Akbay. “We are especially interested in these new growth areas. When it comes to the NonStop community, where we excel is in quickly correlating and aggregating multiple streams of data – including what is being posted to logs on the NonStop application – so that developing patterns or trends can be quickly recognized and then acted upon.”

In responding to my questions based on what I had read from Simonds, it’s reasonable to think that Simonds has predicted the direction NonStop will be taking reasonably accurately – and that’s a reflection on just how well he knows the customers and prospects the NonStop sales team are working with. We still may flap our wings too much and squawk a lot but as a community, NonStop users and vendors appear to be headed in the right direction and for that, the entire NonStop community is relieved.

All the same, I have to believe that there will be a flood of information flowing by the end of March, as early adopters of NonStop X come forward and I for one will be pouring through the emails, blog posts and LinkedIn comments just to see how accurate Simonds really is but I will not be surprised at all if he has really nailed it this time! 

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

…. And check out the group on LinkedIn, Data Driven Apps

ATMmarketplace at
http://www.atmmarketplace.com/blogger.php?id=130763

888-301-2431 / sales@thirddata.com

               Third Data Corporation provides numerous products which can reside on HP Nonstop and other HP and Non-HP  hardware platforms. In addition we provide custom high performance software design and development for our clients.

FastBuild Switch – When building a switch be it ATM-POS, Wire Transfer, EFT, Medical, or any other type of data that needs to get from one place to another, you are usually faced with three choices. Take an existing package and modify your system to match it. Get the vendor to “enhance” their system to meet your needs. Write a new system from scratch. The FastBuild Switch integrates with your existing system, or if you are building from scratch gives you a great start. The switch is also built around the latest HP technology to maximize performance. It integrates several of our other products to maximize cost savings and security in a fault tolerant manner. In a cross platform environment it also runs on other non-Guardian HP supplied platforms.

SecureStore – If you are security conscience trying to become compliant (PCI, HIPAA, etc) then you know that you can not leave sensitive data readily viewable. SecureStore does three things for you. The data is encrypted so that you can become compliant. The data is compressed so that your hardware costs are reduced. As part of disaster recovery your data is sent to multiple locations so it will be available when you need it. As a bonus for those having trouble with Guardian 4K limits there is no record size. It supports Big Data with up to 18 Exabytes. It can also integrate with SQL systems (SQL MX/MP, Oracle, Postgres etc).

NxLib – NxLib provides a platform and utility libraries for developing a high performance multi-threaded applications on NonStop Guardian. The platform provides threading, queuing and network capabilities. This enables development of an application written single threaded style to perform as multi-threaded.   Extensible command processing and help are supported.  Development time can be cut to a fraction of the time it would normally take.  This results in fast  application development with consistent look and feel across multiple projects.

NxWeb – A high performance web server which provides support for NxLib applications.  It also can be used without NxLib.  It provides for secure connections, virtual domains, full http support and interfaces to pathway and IPC communications.

NxFile+ – NxFile+ provides compression and encryption to Enscribe structured files.  The files are configured through a GUI interface and the results are provided seamlessly to your applications, typically without any code changes.  In addition this provides for dynamic key changes on the fly so data stored at-rest may have its encryption keys changed as required.  Because the records can be compressed prior to encryption, it’s also possible to have records which significantly exceed the 4k record size limitations.

NxSSL – NxSSL is an SSL proxy which may be used to provide SSL encryption and authentication services to TCP/IP connections.  It provides full support for certificates and multiple encryption standards.  It has been carefully tuned to provide the highest performance available for any NonStop SSL connection.

NxUndelete – Files accidentally deleted can be a real problem.  Even when a backup is available, it is frequently a significant effort to retrieve it from a backup tape.  NxUndelete implements a recycle bin function on the the HP NonStop system.  Files deleted may be easily recovered using its GUI interface.
 

 A quick reminder to customers using the free, Full-version of MOMI we gave out at the Boot Camp:  the password expires 1/31/15.  Contact us for a new trial password!

·        Learn more about HP NonStop systems - a lot has changed in the past few years

If you would like to receive a free copy of the 'HP NonStop for Dummies' book please register at … http://www.comforte.com/ns4dummies

comForte provides proven and innovative middleware, connectivity, modernization, and security solutions for users of HP NonStop systems. comForte cares about its customers and the HP NonStop platform, offering an unrivaled and unmatched portfolio of software products in the NonStop industry. With customer value in mind, it is comForte’s goal to deliver best-in-class products and solutions and to provide customers with the best support possible. For more information please visit www.comforte.com.

TCM is the premier provider of specialist NonStop IT support services with an 18 year track record of delivering innovative, proven and customer focussed solutions.  Our wide range of professional and managed services includes systems management, hardware support, application management, system migrations and upgrades, through to specific focus areas such as performance, capacity, security, NonStop MQ, business continuity, automation plus more.  With an emphasis on quality and value our flexible approach allows us to deliver a high level of customer satisfaction. For more information please visit http://www.tcm.uk.com/nonstop/.

Let’s talk about a technology with legs and longevity. In 1984, as a young developer on the NonStop TXP, I grew fascinated with the NonStop operating system and its ability to tolerate faults by building on the RAS fundamentals of reliability, availability, and scalability. The capability to immediately fail over from one inoperative component to an operating backup was remarkable. So also was a customer’s option to purchase a minimum of two NonStop CPUs and then scale up as the business grew. It was pure genius from both a technical and a marketing perspective.

Now it’s 2015, and I am still fascinated with NonStop. Taking that same genius of a fault-tolerant operating system and porting it to commodity blades has allowed the platform not only to evolve but to outlive by decades those competitors that failed to adapt to an open environment.

I chose to focus my career path on NonStop architecture and started TANDsoft in 1993 to develop NonStop solutions. However, even I did not foresee how successful the platform would become in extending its value and competitiveness to new entry points in terms of industries, emerging economies, and companies much smaller than NonStop’s large-scale enterprise customers.

TANDsoft recently certified its products on the NonStop X. We, of course, were impressed with the speed of the Intel x86 chip. It is fast! But what impressed us even more was the ease by which OPTA2000, FileSync, and other TANDsoft products could be migrated to the NonStop X architecture from the previous Itanium system. For that we are grateful to HP’s NonStop X team. They did a great job.

When a company concentrates its efforts on developing products for a single platform, you become very aware of the risk you take in running smack into the ceiling of available consumers. TANDsoft still hasn’t hit the ceiling, which we are confident will grow increasingly higher as the NonStop X attracts new customers. My introduction to NonStop in 1984 so impressed me that I made a career as one of its solutions partner. In 2015, I am happy to say that I am still very excited about NonStop.


Jack Di Giacomo
President, TANDsoft

 

Find out more about us at www.tandemworld.net