HPE RUG events worldwide, 2018 – October Update

With all of our attention focused on the biggest RUG Meeting of all, NonStop technical Boot Camp (TBC), that will take place in a matter of days, after a hectic September that had a full calendar of RUG meetings it has been industry events that have attracted members of the NonStop community. Particularly those in the finance industry as Money 20/20 and SIBOS Sydney 2018 shared the headlines for a couple of days last month. The Money 20/20 US conference was held in Las Vegas, Nevada (October 27 – 30) while SIBOS Sydney 2018, as the conference title suggested, was held in Sydney, Australia (Oct 21 – 25).

So, let’s look at these industry events and take a good look at why industry events need our support as much as the traditional NonStop focused RUG events do. The simple truth is that it is at the industry events where our solutions vendor can promote their support for NonStop to an audience that is very much focused on solutions. As a community we are always discussing ways to add “new logos” to the NonStop’s customer base and these industry events are typically the first touch point many enterprises have with NonStop. They are important as they turn out to be great venues for taking the message of NonStop to industries where NonStop already has traction with a reasonable amount of brand awareness.

To be sure, there isn’t anything like the camaraderie at these industry events as can be seen at our RUG events and oftentimes it is only by accident that we run into colleagues as attendance is usually much higher than we would see at traditional HPE sponsored events, but all the same, if given the opportunity, I really like getting among the leadership within specific industries whether it’s financial institutions, transportation or even some of the big technology shows – have you been looking at just how many events are being held each month in support of big data and data analytics? If you haven’t checked out the Striim web site recently, there is numerous web pages covering the events that Striim’s folks have attended or plan on attending – just click on the tab, EVENTS, for an update that will surprise many in the NonStop community. And it looks like London is next up for them, November 13 -14, 2018.

When it came to SIBOS Sydney 2018, I ran into IR people as they walked the exhibition floor and I came across pavilions featuring ACI Worldwide, FIS and many others including FISERV and pretty much every major UK, Canadian, Dutch as well as China, Singapore along with a solid US presence. In other words, there wasn’t a major bank missing from the show and lest I forget, these weren’t tabletop kiosks but major engineering exercises with each bank trying to outdo the other in uniqueness and sheer in-your-face presence! I even walked onto a very nice stand erected by the lads from the Bank of Afghanistan!

Money 20/20 was well attended, with NonStop solutions vendor OmniPayments on hand to talk about OmniCloudX – its move to SaaS and to the cloud – as well as the work OmniPayments has done piloting blockchain in support of Know Your Customer (KYC). Talk to Yash who was present at this event as OmniPayments was one of the Money 20/20 sponsors, and he was pretty excited by the turn out. Nothing like crowds of like-minded financial services bosses to liven up the proceedings. Fresh off the big win at JCPenney, OmniPayments is beefing up its presence in the US following many years of success in central and southern America.

This is all about industry events that should matter to the NonStop community, but for most members of the NonStop community, TBC is going to be the show that really matters. What can we expect to learn from HPE this time around? While the HPE NonStop team has been relatively quiet on the topic preferring to focus on closing out new business for the end of the financial year, I have to believe there will be more than one surprise in the offing.

And don’t forget, there is still yet one more RUG event to be held this year and it will be MATUG which has had a date change to December 4, 2018. It will be held in the originally planned location – DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Baltimore-BWI Airport. It might prove very interesting as it will be the first time members of the NonStop community reconvene following TBC, so it should prove interesting to hear everyone’s point-of-view on all that transpired at the TBC. If you are interested in attending, please register for MATUG.

Looks as if December 4th will be busy on both sides of the Atlantic as Little SIG @ Lloyds is still open and there is time to register. The folks at BITUG look forward to welcoming you, but if for one reason or another you cannot make the event this year but are still interested to know what will be covered then read on:

If you are unable to get to Boot Camp in San Francisco this year, Little SIG is your best opportunity to see the HPE NonStop roadmaps first hand and get all the latest news fresh from Boot Camp on NonStop development, product management and sales from HPE.