Infrasoft and NTI: Delivering on the promise of Partnerships

Infrasoft and NTI: Delivering on the promise of Partnerships

Hybrid IT and the acceleration of modernization

With a history tightly coupled to HPE Nonstop Compute roadmaps where the central goal has been to extend the key attribute of availability to where it encompasses multiple Nonstop sites. System availability became site availability, whereby a failure at one location can be compensated by the presence of a secondary site fully prepared to continue with the business of the enterprise. To meet the needs of business today, the continuous availability of Nonstop is being challenged by the requirement for greater integration with the heterogeneous world of Hybrid IT. A challenge to play by new rules that have accelerated the demand for modernization of Nonstop services, protocols and connectivity.

As part of NTI’s modernization program, it has become important for Nonstop applications to be able to readily and simply access, and be accessed by, external applications in an open, industry-standard manner. DRNet®/Gateway, powered by uLinga Gateway (an Infrasoft product) has become a recognized solution for Nonstop customers looking for such integration of Nonstop with the rest of IT. Such integration has become a fundamental tenet of NTI’s strategy for Nonstop customers. This is especially true as Nonstop Compute is becoming more reliant on adjacent servers whether conventional or virtual servers (that may be cloud resident), for process-intensive, applications including analytics, AI and ML.

“Organizations with high-performance computing needs,
latency-sensitive applications, multi-cloud strategies, or strict
compliance requirements benefit most from
colocation environments designed for Hybrid IT.”

What is Hybrid IT? Integrating On-Premises, Colocation & Cloud Infrastructure
May Lee
March 13, 2025

The Modernization Challenge:
Nonstop systems run your business; but they’re isolated.

Consideration of any modernization pursuit faces many challenges. For instance, modern applications speak REST/JSON whereas Nonstop speaks Pathway, IPC, binary for the most part. More important still, it is through APIs where 75% of enterprise revenue is generated. With mission critical applications creating critical data of importance to the enterprise “locked behind the Nonstop doors,” given the nature of their legacy protocols, modern application that are mobile, cloud-present, AI supported, pursuing modernization generates a need to support REST APIs.

However, based on past experiences (of many Nonstop customers), strategies based around rip-and-replace no longer “de rigueur,” being viewed as too risky, too expensive, too slow and rarely delivering on the promises made. “Let the chips fall where they may,” is anathema for CIOs everywhere. And yet, as has become apparent from the headlines that all too often make it into the public domain, it is often just a simple miscalculation that can bring down an enterprise. A misstep at the protocol level even for a Nonstop application, might prove to be that very chip. Expressed bluntly, CIOs prefer their sleep to late night phone calls that are a harbinger of significant unplanned downtime.

However, when it comes to modernization there is even more at stake. Simple security left unaddressed can freeze-out an application that requires access to mission-critical data held elsewhere in the global network of Hybrid IT. For one financial institution, at a time when its third-party application didn’t include the mandated TLS support, nor was the third-party likely to address any time soon, DRNet®/Gateway modernized the connectivity in an application transparent deployment. The transparency afforded this customer meant that TLS protection was implemented without any changes made to the application – an important hurdle to mount in any major modernization project and a major risk mitigation approach. This practical use-case scenario that met their challenge, is only one example of what DRNet®/Gateway can provide.

“What we saw with the first deployment of DRNet®/Gateway at the site
of one of our AP/J Customers, already using DRNet^® gave the customers the means
to provide TLS protection of TCP/IP connections to Visa given the application,
provided by a third party, did not include such mandated security support.”

Cody Newton
NTI CEO

 The partnership that delivers:
Nonstop systems modernization needs “a village.”

Whatever the challenge might happen to be, with DRNet^®/Gateway,
modernizing the integration you need today to be better instrumented
for participation in enterprise Hyrid IT deployments.

Together, Infrasoft and NTI provide a unified platform for both continuity and modernization. With the product integration, the two partners ensure business continuity proceeds without interruption even as the enterprise requirements for business integration in a world of Hybrid IT moves ahead unabated. NTI delivers 40 years of Nonstop data replication expertise, deep customer relationships, proven timely deployment and ongoing support, and when it comes to BASE24 / BASE24-eps, knowledge based on experience of all participating resources present in their ecosystem.

“DRNet®/Gateway will play a bigger role in assisting modernization
as is now necessary as Nonstop customers face the challenges
being encountered today with the need to access enterprise-wide
analytics, AI and ML.

“DRNet®/Gateway bridges legacy and modern systems in ways
few other Nonstop vendors can provide.”

Andrew Price
Infrasoft Director, Business Operations

Infrasoft and NTI represents a unique way forward for any modernization participation in Hybrid IT. The integration of Infrasoft’s uLinga/ Gateway with NTI’s DRNet^® has led to the introduction of DRNet^®/Gateway into the DRNet product portfolio. Infrasoft and NTI differentiate their partnership by delivering real products and that’s central to the cooperation that has resulted between the companies. The range of capabilities as a result is as diverse as is the deployment of Nonstop and achieving that represents a major milestone for both Nonstop vendors.

Perhaps the most important aspect of DRNet®/Gateway is how well it can support REST (REpresentational State Transfer) clients and REST consumers. IT organizations move forward from simple XML / SOAP over HTTP to the more widely-deployed REST architecture, also over HTTP. DRNet®/Gateway allows any type of REST client to access any type of Nonstop application as a REST service, without any change to the application. Furthermore, DRNet®/Gateway can take on the role of a REST consumer allowing any Nonstop application to access and/or consume remote REST services.

As an example from a recent request, NTI was able to propose the REST client sends/receives JSON requests and responses whereby the data transformation required conversion of JSON into DDL-formatted binary data, as expected by the backend application. This is a routine capability of DRNet®/Gateway. Responses from any backend application can be transformed by DRNet®/Gateway back into JSON for the REST client.

This is of importance to the Nonstop customer as in this case, the backend applications were a mix of Pathway-based, Guardian $RECEIVE (IPC)-based applications, where there was also an expectation that communication would be TCP/IP directly in addition to HTTP over TCP/IP. Under consideration was that of a Pathway application in this case, a BASE24 user configuration screen, needed to be provided to other processes including those on

Rest-enabling existing Nonstop Applications, delivering them as REST Services:

Allowing Nonstop Application, consuming external REST Servies:

Another example of REST client is where a Guardian in-house application needed to be accessed. As for another use case for TCP/IP directly, Nonstop customers can consider providing access to BASE24 XPNET via JSON.

Nonstop customers benefit; now available – modern integration they need today!

“More important still is how DRNet®/Gateway has opened up access
for Pathway, directly to HTTP and TCP/IP. Also, along with user exits,
powerful transformation properties that come with the product,
out of the box, including XML to/from Binary, JSON to/from Binary,
JSON to/from ISO with additional transformations available
on request – all of which today is uniquely provided by DRNet®/Gateway.

Andrew Pham
NTI Senior Software Engineer

With the availability of DRNet®/Gateway, Nonstop customers now have a REST bridge for Nonstop. With such, Nonstop customers can REST-enable any Nonstop application; no code changes required. Powered by uLinga Gateway technology, DRNet®/Gateway transforms your Nonstop into a “first-class REST citizen,” just as it doesn’t touch a single line of code. DRNet®/Gateway gives REST integration now while preserving what works.

One platform. One vendor relationship. One path forward.

For Nonstop customers, there are three questions that need to be addressed where DRNet®/Gateway is already providing value –

Can you afford to keep Nonstop data locked away from your modern apps, enterprise wide?

Can you risk rewriting mission critical applications?

Can you wait months or even years from the promise of business integration when business demands speed?

Hybrid IT, Modernization and migration all call for rapid changes but for the Nonstop customer, there is always a balance between rapid and risk. Partnering can better address this ongoing risk / reward equation. Deployment that is fast, safe and proven. No code changes; no regression testing of applications required! No recompilation; no risk to production business logic! No disruption; transparent to your applications! GUI tools: visual mapping, not manual coding! Weeks to production; not months or years! Proven technology; production deployments with measurable results.

When it comes to the partnership between Infrasoft and NTI, the wins are already on the board confirming the benefits that arise from strong vendors simply doing it better; the strength of a partnership always comes down to the mix of skillsets. What better pursuit can there be for IT professionals than being able to turn legacy into API gold!

Contact NTI about DRNet®/Gateway today – https://network-tech.com/contact-us