HPE NonStop makes IT modernization easy

The HPE Community Blog continues to be a good place to visit. Among the steady stream of posts by HPC, AI and Labs you will come across posts by the NonStop team providing invaluable insights into products along with tips and pointers for NonStop tools, utilities, APIs and more.  NonStop Marketing and Product Management make it a point to post and if as yet you are not frequenting this important blog, then you may want to consider adding a monthly visit to just see what new for NonStop is being highlighted. 

In the post (above) Vikas Kapoor, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, HPC, AI & Labs approaches the topic of modernization by comparing it to what many are doing to their own homes. “Let’s talk about reality television for a minute. Specifically, home improvement shows,” posts Kapoor. “While each highlights dynamic homeowner priorities, viewed as a group the content is almost always the same. There’s the call for an open floor plan, line of sight connecting all living areas, and new, high-end, shiny, stainless-steel appliances.”

The way Vikas sees it, “There are countless opinions about what defines modernization of the development environment, and they closely mirror that of the homeowners. In many ways, IT development wants to leverage open technologies as much as possible even as they want connectivity to every corner of the enterprise and beyond. Above all, when it comes to enterprise IT, software development modernization attracts the most attention.”

Attention it may be, but the reality is that for any enterprise to have a competitive edge it needs to be responsive to a changing marketplace. This has been brought into greater focus during the global pandemic where supply chains and lockdowns have hampered innovation almost at every turn. It is hard to remain responsive when the raw materials are absent. And yet, there has never been a better time to modernize. Any perception we may have about our applications being just OK is not a disclosure that will be welcomed by today’s enterprises.  

In his post, Vikas Kapoor quotes Sridhar Neelakantan, NonStop product manager responsible for middleware, languages and tools. For Sridhar, “A perception of what it means to be modern is deeply embedded in the mindset of IT professionals today. NonStop development priorities and innovations have ensured that software developers have all the tools and utilities at hand that they would expect to find on any modern, connected, platform. Comparing the modernization taking place across NonStop development with that of home building may be unusual but IT is as much influenced by market expectations as is the home building industry.” 

Considerable attention has been given to developer requirements when porting applications to NonStop or even when writing new applications. There are many must-have languages, services and utilities now available to the NonStop developer. For instance, whether your preference is to code in C / C++ or perhaps Java and Python, then “runtime environments exist for each to run on NonStop. When it comes to C / C++, NonStop also offers a modern and standards compliant compiler such that it excels in support of mission critical applications.”

As for Java and Python, these “have been the subjects of considerable development effort by the NonStop team,” says Mr. Neelakantan. “NonStop has been offering Python 3 as part of its L-Series software bundle and aims to continue being open and standards driven to better provide the best programming tools essential to develop state-of-the-art, mission critical applications.” However, this is just a reference to a development starting point as a lot more capabilities easily recognized for being part of any modern approach to development have become available to the NonStop developer.

While this post looks at the modernization of development highlighting the breadth of capabilities on offer, there is another post planned for this month. In this follow-on post, the focus will turn from development to deployment. But for now, a quick look at what is available today for IT developers and the reveal as to how large an investment HPE has made in NonStop, you should visit the HPE Community Blog. Just follow the hyperlink above or cut and paste this url into your browser –

https://community.hpe.com/t5/servers-systems-the-right/hpe-nonstop-makes-it-modernization-easy/ba-p/7175761#.Y4pw_HbML5A

Finally, as Vikas Kapoor concludes, “Recognizing a home as being modern may be the substance of television program today but in the real world of IT, it has become even easier to recognize just how modern NonStop has become. To put an even simpler spin on this, there are now no impediments remaining that would prevent any enterprise from deploying its next mission critical application on NonStop.”