HPE NonStop Corner – perspective lookback at NonStop TBC 2021

When HPE CEO Antonio Neri introduced the IT world to GreenLake two years ago at HPE Discover 2019, the response from the industry was mixed. As much as it was unexpected it was also a sizable pivot by a major vendor. In his keynote address to the attendees at the event in Las Vegas, Neri made it clear that the future for HPE customers would be one where they would have a choice as to how best to consume technology for the benefit of their enterprise:

“Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) today announced plans to transition HPE into an as a Service company over time. This includes a commitment to provide its customers choice by offering its entire portfolio, through a range of subscription based, pay-per-use and as a Service offerings, by 2022. HPE will also continue to provide its hardware and software in a capital expenditure and license-based model, ultimately giving customers choice in consuming HPE products and services in a traditional or as a Service offering.”

This week, the tweet above from Neri represents a succinct explanation as to why the work continues with GreenLake. “When it comes to digital transformation, you shouldn’t have to choose between flexibility and control. That’s why we created GreenLake – the platform that brings the cloud to you – from HPE, the edge to the cloud company.” Now it has become official; NonStop will be participating in GreenLake and even though the level of participation will come in waves as the pursuit of ever closer integration will happen in time, even the most knowledgeable of NonStop technicians are giving GreenLake a much closer look. And nowhere was this better illustrated than at this year’s virtual NonStop Technical Boot Camp 2021 (NonStopTBC21).

Let’s hear from Keith Moore, Distinguished Technologist at HPE

“Clearly, HPE GreenLake enablement for NonStop is unique when compared to the rest of the HPE GreenLake enablement. NonStop has the ability to deliver detailed Opex usage data for maximum granularity in how customers use their NonStop services.”

“At this year’s Technical Bootcamp I made a concerted effort to mingle in the chat areas – especially in the topics and talks that mapped to my interests (Dev/Ops, operating systems and VMs, security, computer languages, computer history, etc. ) I am hoping that some participants got to ‘meet,’ and, in a way, interact closer with me than they might have if I was just a talking head at the front of the room.

“My sincere hope is that some of the new people I met online will contact me directly for more conversations about where they need NonStop software to morph in the coming years.

“GreenLake may have been the star, but looking at how this was affecting the NonStop user community was never far from my mind.”

If you are a sports fan who watches televised sporting events you will know of the style of commentary television viewers everywhere have grown accustomed too; it’s no longer good enough just to describe the sport one action at a time. Today, the play-by-play sportscaster is joined by at least on “color commentator” who uses his inside knowledge of players, clubs and the many entourages that accompany so many high profile sportsman to keep viewers better informed about what really is going on.

This year, the NonStop community benefitted from such a model where Keith Moore and Justin Simonds, Master Technologist at HPE, together provided commentaries that mirrored what we routinely see with all televised sporting events. While the lines may have been blurred between who was describing the “plays” and who was providing the “background interest” stories, together they made for a much livelier and indeed consequently more detailed presentation than the NonStop community had previously experienced.

Again, from Keith Moore:

“The other interesting difference this year at TBC was that I did those two talks with Justin. I really enjoyed doing this as an insider/outsider with years of experience working in TP orchestration tools and with AI/ML/Swarm learning+blockchain at Tandem thru HPE.

“Back when the DSM tools were coming out at Tandem[ca: 1989?], the big buzz was about AI (early Tandem event management tools had rules-based  ‘AI’) . Thirty years later, the buzz is all about yes, you guessed it, AI together with ML with perhaps a little IoT thrown in for good measure. 

“It’s silly to sit back and feel complacent with such prescient experience. Instead, I think NonStop should parlay that experience into new value for customers. So I ask (no, beg) for customer input on how they need us to deliver into the VM, container, and future serverless software deployment models.”

As for Justin Simonds take on this style of presentation it became all too clear in the responses to questions posed during the presentation. “It was so much easier to respond to any questions that were raised in real time whenever Keith Moore stepped into the conversation!” Will we see more presentations along these lines in the future? Perhaps when we do discuss transformation then this may indeed be yet one more that will garner our attention. If the post-event discussions held shortly after the event wrapped up are any guide then yes, look for more engagement with the community coming from even more play-by-play commentators supported by their colorful color commentators!