DataExpress – the choice of configuration of DataExpress is only limited by your imagination and creativity!

In our last article it was all about the NonStop Technical Boot Camp. As we looked back at all that we heard it definitely provided considerable food for thought. Top of the list? How rapidly were NonStop users moving to NonStop X and will 2018 see the first NonStop users running on virtualized NonStop (vNonStop)? In other words, will the highlight of 2018 be summed up by the one word – migration! It has been a long time since we have seen the NonStop team providing such a rich variety of choice, as they are providing now, so it will not for be lack of options.

However, given the nature of the markets that HPE serves with the NonStop product line, migration is still a risky proposition and many NonStop users will be weighing their options carefully. Will it be a case of adding just a few more Itanium blades to their current blade systems? Will it be better to move to L-Series operating system to better avail themselves of more options down the road? Will they configure hybrids comprising not traditional systems and clouds, but rather, bladesystems and converged systems as they connect Itanium to x86? Or, a little more controversial perhaps, might be a choice to wait for the unveiling of support of vNonStop for VMware and push virtualized NonStop workloads into the cloud?

Having written all of the above it’s not clear that some additional options have been overlooked and for DataExpress, this is the good news as it seems it will only be lack of imagination or indeed creativity that will put boundaries around what’s NonStop. Even now, as we whiteboard different configurations for DataExpress, we can see that DataExpress clients can go in many diverse directions where the only constraints will be the age-old criteria of price, quality and performance. Early discussions with these clients suggest that cost and speed will rule the day and this is understandable – they all know that DataExpress is good! And yet, the references to hybrid configurations seem to be nearing the top of the list as NonStop users come to understand that there will be essentially no latency penalties whether it is exchanges between NonStop and  NonStop or NonStop and Linux.

If you missed checking out the DataExpress NEWS / BLOG, then you should take some time to check out the post of December 23, 2017, Hybrids – the path to follow for NonStop users of DataExpress . “Hybrid IT is a major stepping stone towards an end game strategy for transformation already under way at many large data centers. This transformation has as its ultimate goal cloud computing and for many industry watchers, it is the combination of edge compute combined with cloud compute that will dominate the IT landscape for the next decade or more. Irrespective of Gartner’s recent prognosis that the edge will eat the cloud, for the majority of data center managers, a balance between the two will likely prove more viable longer term. However, getting to where even the best balanced edge / cloud IT structure is in place has to pass through hybrid IT as there is no desire for rip-and-replace approaches and this opens the doors to vendors like DataExpress where there are DataExpress NonStop (DXNS) and DataExpress Open Platform (DXOP) product offerings available today.”

The NonStop community really hasn’t talked much about edge and data center / cloud but that is just one more option beginning to enter the conversation. Is it top of the list? Well, not yet, but our clients are recognizing the value in filtering incoming data as close to the source as possible and along with the filtering comes the analytics. Less than half of the data will make it back to the data center / cloud. But what of the rest? There may be historically important information or possibly even information required by regulatory authorities and what better way to get it back to the data center than scheduling the automatic and secure transfer of that information in the form of a file. As the edge becomes empowered there is no reason to assume that there will be tables and databases populated by more data than what is passed to the data center / cloud in real time and this is precisely the type of environment where DataExpress has historically flourished!

We have read so much about what was presented at the NonStop Technical Boot Camp and have gradually become more aware of the rich variety of options becoming available to all NonStop users. However, if you missed talking to DataExpress while at the event or you missed the event entirely, and would like to know how well DataExpress would fit into your migration plans, then we would be only too happy to give you even more insight into the true value proposition of DataExpress whether your needs are to run DataExpress on bladesystems, converged systems, hybrids or even out at the edge. Just give us a call or send us an email and conversations about this will too be welcomed by everyone here at DataExpress. And remember, too, if you are a customer or prospect of comForte then you can reach out to comForte team as well – they are now well-versed on all things DataExpress and will welcome your calls.

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