Infrasoft broadens its appeal by supporting Hybrid IT

We may have not made it into the very first issue of NonStop Insider but we could be seen participating in the second issue. As a NonStop Partner for many years and with a relationship with our partner comforte firmly established, Infrasoft continue to provide communications solutions for those members of the NonStop community where the presence of mainframe applications continue to depend on transactions and data created on NonStop. The Infrasoft uLinga solution supports multiple connectivity options and in so doing, has eliminated any requirement to continue running either the legacy NonStop SNAX or ACI Worldwide ICE product offerings.

A second act is always a hard task to undertake. For Infrasoft, following the success of the Insession ICE product suite, the founders of Infrasoft saw an opportunity to create and design a “right” communications offering. In so doing they saw a pressing issue concerning more industry-standard ways of connecting systems even as these networked systems included applications with requirements little changed from when they were first implemented.

SNA may be dead as a networking architecture but SNA lives through well documented APIs. Just as we see across the industry today – particularly in the financial services sector – it’s become all about the APIs and for program to program exchanges, it is these APIs that are deeply rooted in SNA that open the doors for such interaction.

Often considered the “black art” of systems and platforms by those deploying applications, getting the network right is never a trivial task. Today Infrasoft brings decades of experience in making sure networks involving the NonStop platform work and are as available as the NonStop systems themselves. This is a critical element of how Infrasoft operates today. With the lessening of specialist communications expertise in the marketplace, it is crucial that such support is provided by Infrasoft as NonStop customers continue to struggle finding and then retaining qualified personnel. When it comes to locating those with experience on both IBM mainframes and NonStop systems where subsystems like IBM’s CICS retain a dominant presence it is the Infrasoft team that NonStop users can turn to for support of these hybrid IT configurations:

The features Infrasoft uLinga supports today are a direct result of the Infrasoft team listening to the needs of NonStop customers and being in a position to quickly provide support within uLinga that addresses these needs. As a measure of the success Infrasoft continues to enjoy, when the NonStop X systems began shipping, the NonStop team elected not to carry forward their own SNAX products preferring instead to reference uLinga whenever NonStop customers called for communication solutions previously supported by either SNAX or ICE.

Infrasoft has made a commitment to the NonStop X platform and as new systems are introduced, this commitment extends to validating uLinga with each and every new system the NonStop team brings to market. This close relationship that Infrasoft has maintained with HPE as it has also maintained with comforte means that valuable resources formerly assigned to supporting SNAX can be repurposed in support of other NonStop products.

When it comes to comforte, according to comforte Director Partner Development & Marketing NonStop Solutions, Thomas Gloerfeld, “‘Comforte and Infrasoft have a long-standing partnership and we have enjoyed – and continue to enjoy – working with Infrasoft through the years. We highly value their excellent technical expertise in all areas concerning communications to and from HPE NonStop systems. We are looking forward to working closely together in this area in the future.”

In a world that has become hybrid and where hybrid IT has become norm for most enterprise, Infrasoft made sure that uLinga was architected to support a number of platforms. This support for open platforms in addition to NonStop was deemed necessary as even without consideration of cloud deployments, the separation of middleware and application logic from the underlying metal via virtualization means that even the most traditional of NonStop customers may elect to run their NonStop applications on virtual machines.

uLinga can run in a Linux and Windows environment either under a VM or natively. Infrasoft now has two customers running uLinga on Linux and this is a market segment that the company expects to see experiencing further growth. Having the option to run their communications within NonStop or an adjacent Linux or Windows platform holds appeal for many enterprises.

Looking ahead to the upcoming NonStop Technical Boot Camp – the new promoted All-Digital Experience – like many of you we too are most interested in how popular it proves to be. Time zones may be challenging for some but the availability of an On Demand option to view presentations in our own time zone are much appreciated. So much has changed and not just with the way we build out our networks as every aspect of eCommerce has seen enterprise place more focus on their customer facing interfaces.

There are challenges ahead as we see even greater need to connect as the data centers of the past shake off the last semblance of homogeneity. It’s a hybrid world for products but it’s also a hybrid world of relationships and for Infrasoft, enjoying this strong partnership with HPE and comforte, we view our ability to keep supporting mission critical solutions on NonStop continuing for many more years.

Again, our congratulations to the NonStop Insider team for bringing this digital magazine to the NonStop community. Passing the 50^th issue milestone is certainly a feat all involved in can be very proud of what they have accomplished.

Peter Shell | Managing Director | Infrasoft Pty Limited
peter.shell@infrasoft.com.au | tel +61 411 105 330
www.infrasoft.com.au