On HPE and How NonStop Will Continue

I recall, way back, when Compaq, after acquiring Tandem, also acquired DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation, for the younger readers). Tandem was a decent-sized company, but DEC was huge. This must have been around 1998 and the DECUS (Dec User Group) meeting was being held at the LA Convention center. We were invited and I was anxious to attend, since I had given many presentations on how NonStop was better than VMS (Virtual Memory System) in terms of availability. NonStop Guardian and DEC VMS are arguable some of the best Operation Systems ever written.

This is not just my opinion but was stated by Gartner way back in the Gartner conferences of 1999 in response to a question on when Windows would have the same capabilities as VMS and Guardian. The Gartner response at the time was, never. Anyway, I’m digressing. At the DECUS conference I recall a group of Solution Architects talking about DEC, VMS and how everyone there was gray-haired and soon to retire.

The discussion was along the lines of how VMS was going to continue. No one seemed ready to ‘grab the baton’ on this great OS. I remember at that time admiring their dedication to the system. Now we at NonStop are coming to grips with a similar situation, although there are those waiting to grab this baton.

At TBC2024 there were two presentations of note: TBC24.TB27 Hello World by Shanice Abigal and TBC24.TB33 The Journey to become a NonStop Professional by Shanice Abigal, Shauna Evans and Lucrecia Krause. If you have the password, these can be found at  NonStop TBC 2024 Session Downloads – NonStopTBC . The HPE developer’s portal now has a NonStop option, thanks mostly to Shanice. If you go to https://developer.hpe.com/ and select the ‘Products’ pulldown you will see NonStop which has a wealth of information.

There is access to video’s, Blog’s, brochures, sample code (“Hello World”) and a special section called NonStop 101 where those unfamiliar with NonStop can learn about it. There are tutorials, examples and even deep dives depending on interest.  This is a great resource for newcomers and is being enhanced often.

For those familiar with the “NonStop under 40” group, this is being redesigned and will be known as “New to NonStop” which I believe is a better title. In a discussion with Shauna, I learned that ‘New to NonStop’ will soon have a LinkedIn page where those who are new to the platform can find information, links and also be assigned a mentor.

So, if you are new to NonStop stay tuned for that. If you are “Old to NonStop” (guilty as charged), please consider signing up as a mentor when the page kicks off. The New to NonStop committee are Shauna Evans, Shanice Abigail, Paden Holenstein at Gravic and Vito Shrivastava at Idelji. If anyone wants to join as a mentor/mentee or just wants to be a part of the program they are more than welcome to contact any one of them.

As Jimmy would say, it’s Excitin’. For those “New to NonStop” you need to Google Jimmy Treybig.