TCM Team – Prepared to fully embrace Nonstop TBC 2025!

TCM Team – Prepared to fully embrace Nonstop TBC 2025!

Whenever the Nonstop Compute community gathers, there’s always a crowd. Be it a local city gathering in Tampa, Florida, or something much grander in Germany, the UK or Australia there’s no denying the ability to pull in a sizable representation of the Nonstop community. The presence of Nonstop customers, vendors and partners, together with usually a generous mix of HPE management, sales and support team members, always proves attractive to all Nonstop stakeholders.

Such will be the case in October 2025. While there will be a gathering in The Netherlands for INNIG (Interexperience Netherlands NonStop Interest Group), the main-tent event of the year was the Nonstop Technology and Business Conference 2025. It soon became clear to all involved in the Houston, Texas, event that this year, the event attracted attendees from AsiaPac / Japan, Europe, Australia, and LATAM, who joined with their counterparts from the US. At this level, the event proved to be a success just as it proved it was still capable of attracting the majority of major players within the Nonstop community.

Running alongside the event was the Customer Council, well moderated by Justin Simonds, Master Technologist, HPE. In attendance were twelve of the biggest Nonstop users and their influence over everything Nonstop related proves to be hard to ignore. It was only a few years back when it was this group of Nonstop customers that persuaded Nonstop development to push ahead with the next generation of Nonstop converged systems that have gone to market this year.

As with every event there will always be much that is covered post-event. Did it work for the customer? The partners and vendors? Was the enough content to meet every stakeholder’s needs? As with any event post-mortem TCM has attended (along with our own internal review), the one thing that comes to the fore is that there is always room for improvement. Nevertheless, TCM cannot overlook the effort that was put into the event by Connect, the Nonstop community’s organization overseeing the global events activities of Nonstop. From TCM’s point of view, however, it wasn’t just a case of there being room for improvement but rather, a re-evaluation of the value proposition of all such events and whether the opportunities presenting themselves warranted the full-court press we have executed in former times.

The haunting melody from the film “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” as composed by Ennio Morricone, and made popular by the interpretation by US musician Hugo Montenegro and his synthesizer, is among the most recognized movie soundtracks of all time! The distinctive presence within the original score contained gunfire, whistling and yodeling all contributing to what the composer suggested resembled the howling of a coyote. With Nonstop TBC 2025 being held in Texas, the suggestion of the presence of howling coyotes became an image hard to ignore.

The Good … quite simply, the venue centered on an exhibition great room initially presented a challenge for all attendees but ultimately proved to be an inviting stage. Being able to tend to the stand even as Nonstop executives and management took to the stage as the primary keynote presenters, was both a break from the past as well as an opportunity to be seen being visible. Attendees knew where to find us and with our golf putting enticement, it worked as keynote sessions broke for refreshments. What else was particularly appreciated was that coffee breaks and the meal services never left the venue. Feeding attendees matters and this was well-handled by Connect.

The Bad … not to put too fine a point on what stood out was well, for TCM, the venue and the exhibition hall where there was a complete lack of privacy. Every vendor lining the perimeter walls was showcased no matter what was happening at any one vendors table. This is nothing new to TCM but it really stood out this time and as the students of events will only too happily inform you, customers rarely want to stop and chat when every other attendee can see what is taking place. Privacy matters for all attendees, Nonstop vendors included.

The Ugly … no mother likes to hear her only child called ugly and the same goes with Connect when it comes to their only annual main-tent event. However, there was just too much information that could be presented in such a short space of time. The net result being that some presenters had a room with less than five in the audience. Considering the effort and cost of TBC, the numbers of tracks was quite simply overwhelming.

In addition, the much-anticipated beer bust that always precedes the main event, an opportunity to meet and greet, proves to be the foundation for future conversations in the week. However, this year, the room was empty with attendees preferring to go off site for their entertainment. With such a poor start, it makes things very difficult to turn things around.

TCM will continue to support Nonstop community events wherever they take place – our next event in The Netherlands is a testament to just how well we support Nonstop – and will be looking to attend more in the future. Perhaps there is another movie song we should be singing, going forward (and at TCM, such a sentiment is considered possible), that being, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life!”