It’s a New Year. Now what will it be that will excite the Nonstop community?

It’s a New Year. Now what will it be
that will excite the Nonstop community?

A New Year has begun. Changes continue as technology advances. Investments pour in. Everything is equated against a measuring stick as to its degree of radical transformation. Yes, we are all being encouraged to consider revamping our systems by investing in mega data centers and, possibly just as importantly, working out the sweet spot where power, cooling, security and the ever-dominating GPUs can coexist at the best cost.

The above truly suggests nothing new. These headlines could have been pulled from numerous sources just as it’s easy to throw even more aggressive predictions into the mix. When it comes to 2026, the Nonstop community is in the process of upgrading their systems following shipments of the Nonstop NS9 X5 / NS5 X5 converged systems. The news that new, upgraded, converged systems would be shipped came as welcome relief for many Nonstop customers – nothing like continuation of a well-known, traditional, line of systems – even as CIOs everywhere face daunting challenges.

Balancing the perceived benefits of AI with the need of keeping the customer satisfied (all while pursuing pioneering efforts that come with embracing clouds) makes for a highly volatile, if indeed unsettling path forward. But the future has arrived, according to many industry pundits. Is the Nonstop community prepared, or is this all a case of yes, we have navigated our way through equally drastic industry realignments in the past, so what’s the big deal?

In my last column to this masthead, I wrote of how I have paid scant attention to the past. I also commented on how, all the time, I have been looking forward to what comes next. I also welcomed those first baby steps taken within HPE that suggests there is alignment taking place between Nonstop and the greater HPE.  In making this observation, I saw positivity in HPE pursuing a multifaced strategy that embraced Hybrid IT.

A natural outcome, you could say, given that having separate Compute, Storage, Networking (together with the fabrics that make all the pieces gel into place), has been a practical demonstration of Hybrid IT that we occasionally overlook. Those first baby steps also represent an early inclusion of the “application of basic AI”, where Nonstop Compute management began talking about how Nonstop and AI would be playing nicely sometime in the not-too-distant future.

One immediate observation that can be made is the accelerated efforts among members of the Nonstop vendor community concerning the transformation of simple data replication to where the more critical requirement was to embrace solutions delivering a data streaming platform. This transformation headlined a number of 2025 presentations including those from NTI and Striim. Given how both vendors embrace a very similar Change Data Capture model (as did GoldenGate) the flow-on to stepping up to turning the outgoings from Nonstop into a real time data streaming platform was a low-risk value extension to the core processing capabilities.

This just happens to be one exciting aspect of Hybrid IT that I will be following in 2026. There will be more Hybrid IT deliverables forthcoming for Nonstop customers that should stimulate future conversations. Hybrid IT in itself is not new, let’s be cognizant of how often Hybrid IT has appeared in vendor marketing collateral.

What is new is the growing acceptance of Nonstop as a participant rather than an observer. An active partner rather than a passive outsider. This was given further credence when in the Nonstop Technology and Business Conference (Nonstop TBC) 2025, reference was made to the likely appearance of adjacent servers doing specific tasks that required processing not readily in step with the underlying architecture of Nonstop.

As soon as the reference to such adjacent servers becomes a way of life for the Nonstop community then the need to move data becomes imperative. When you consider, as is likely, AI executing on an adjacent server (in support of validation, security, and encryption, etc.) then there will most definitely be the movement of data and the requirement for timely resolution becomes a necessity.

In 2025 we witnessed a number of Nonstop customers turning to Nonstop vendors for solutions and clearly, the work done by Infrasoft with the bidirectional support for Kafka (a foundation for many vendors looking to deliver data streaming platforms), sends a clear message that there is no hinderance in establishing Hybrid IT even when it is in support of AI.

Having paid scant attention to what has happened in the past may not have been a priority for me and yet, I am still very much aware that much of what we are discussing of late has its foundations deeply rooted in the past. To say we have all seen this before – again, talking about Hybrid IT and AI, for instance – is a fairly safe statement of fact.

Who can forget the appearance of service bureaus in the late 1970s / early 1980s? Who can readily forget our dabbling with distributed computing? 4GL? ORBs, CORBA, Object Programming. They all contributed to what we bear witness to, today.

Change does continue as technology advances. But change can only be recognized because there was a clear starting point. Change is not a one-off. Change can be both good and bad as it can lead us forward just as easily as it can sidetrack our endeavors. Trust me; I spent months comprehending, then using, the last programming methodology that IBM delivered under the banner of Hierarchical/Input/Process/Output (HIPO, as I have referenced in the past). Being an early step towards 4GL didn’t deter me from spending a lot of time working with an IBM template to reduce complex programming tasks to a simple, enhanced, flowcharted schematic.

When it comes to 2026 and where Hybrid IT runs rampant, of late I have become just as cautious about speculating on its immediate benefits. You cannot simplify by adding more parts or as Colin Chapman of Lotus F1 fame was reported as having said, “Simplify, then add lightness.” Nonstop has achieved industry-leading levels of availability due to its cloud-like, computer-in-a-box, approach.

However, accessing an adjacent server is not a simplification in that it’s adding a level of complexity that will engage colleagues in a shared knowledge environment that is new to all parties. So yes, as tantalizing a solution as it might first appear, when it comes to embracing Hybrid IT through connectivity to adjacent servers, tread with caution, indeed, tread lightly, is all I can add.

And with that, I wish you the very best of work-life balance for all of 2026 as I look forward to seeing many of you at 2026 conferences and events worldwide.