Pyalla Technologies – Continuing to see a bright future for NonStop

The pages of the calendar have turned yet again and each of us is staring a new year. One more “circle around the sun” completed, even as we have become more aware that the NonStop systems we once knew so well are evolving, and evolving fast. They too are circling around the sun but unlike us, they aren’t showing any signs of age. Quite the contrary, with each presentation I sit through and with each event demo I witness, NonStop seems to be getting fresher with age. NonStop is innovating faster than I can recall in all my time spent working at Tandem Computers and new products are appearing with a regularity that continues to keep the NonStop community second-guessing what is to happen next.

Picking up a car magazine, as I am more than likely to do at this time of year, I came across some observations that could just as easily be attributed to any journalist or analyst covering IT. “If you want to evaluate the strength of any company, look at the way it handles new products,” writes Motor Trend Editor-in-Chief, Edward Loh, in the December, 2017, issue of the magazine. “That it has the resources and foresight to innovate and seek white space in crowded markets is a fundamental indicator of success.” Even when car manufacturers launch the proverbial lemon that fails to ignite anyone, “these might appear as failures to some but I see it as a sign of strength. Real progress is not just about taking risks.” Furthermore, and a common thread shared between cars and computers, “the speed of the tech-driven world we live in only highlights the mantra: launch, innovate, iterate, or abandon.”

As I look at what will likely transpire in 2018 I am struck by the image of an imminent hybrid community. Yes, we have all read about hybrid IT and about simplifying the transformation to hybrid IT, but as a community we too are transforming and we will see the emergence of a community that is very hybrid in nature. For several decades now about the only thing that separated users of NonStop came down to whether they run Enscribe or SQL/MX. Outside of the preference in database implementation, pretty much everything else about NonStop was uniform. True, there were the discussions over the merits of the Guardian personality versus the OSS personality but of late, it seems like the OSS advocates have gained the upper hand. In almost every discussion concerning NonStop there was little to suggest anything other than a traditional approach was being taken to addressing business problems in the world of mission critical systems.

But this is all about to change. As more of the NonStop community moves to running their solutions on the L-Series operating system, the doors are opening wide to differing deployment options. Running on traditional NonStop systems may be just one approach even as running on virtual machines finds adherents. Running applications that are truly hybrid, with the database on NonStop and the Java application on Linux, either on conjoined traditional systems or as just two virtualized workloads, will only add more spice to any conversation regarding NonStop. Buying complete systems from HPE may be one solution but increasingly we should be prepared to see many more NonStop users buying their x86 servers from their preferred supplier. Finally, NonStop with its database may remain entrenched within the data center, be it traditional or a cloud, even as NonStop may be positioned much closer to the edge or indeed, be virtualized and running on the edge.

In other words, the opportunities to innovate will be almost endless and it will be up to individual creative types to decide the best fit for their business when it comes to actual deployment of NonStop. This is not to say that there will not be false starts, with some projects being abandoned. But yes, we will see a hybrid NonStop community develop and as Motor Trend observed, we are about to enter an era where all of us will be engaged in “launch, innovate, iterate, or abandon” and that is a nice place to be. Not every decision we take will result in a winning solution and being prepared to abandon and then move on to try something else is definitely a hallmark of NonStop. With each step taken, there will be more creative ways to utilize NonStop unearthed and for good reason – nothing is as available as NonStop (a must in mission critical transaction processing) and nothing scales out as well as NonStop (a must in high-growth deployments).

As 2017 wound down I wrote of how I was pleased to witness just how quickly the new NonStop development team has broadened the appeal of NonStop and, in so doing, has seen NonStop return to popularity and growth. There are challenges remaining of course – I have my fingers crossed that HPE gets behind NonStop not just for banking and finance but stock exchanges and healthcare as well, particularly with blockchain now on NonStop and an effective hybrid strategy in place – but the signs are all there. A couple of good people evangelizing NonStop might be all it takes to see even more “new logos” added. So yes, keep reading NonStop Insider for the rest of the year as I am sure there will be more than one surprise coming from the newly-minted hybrid NonStop community as I continue see the future for NonStop getting brighter by the day!

Richard Buckle
Cofounder and CEO
Pyalla Technologies, LLC