Infrasoft gives you platform independence!

The popularity of uLinga and the success it has achieved in the marketplace as the best alternative to either HPE’s SNAX or ACI’s ICE products has taken several years. However, this hasn’t surprised either Infrasoft or its sales and marketing partner, comForte. Undertaking a modernization of essential connectivity services and protocols was never a project to be lightly considered but rather represented a commitment to an important infrastructure element that would be relied upon for many years to come.

Gaining the recognition and the support by HPE as the only connectivity option for the NonStop X family of servers (alleviating any requirement on the HPE NonStop team to commit its own resources to porting SNAX to the x86 architecture), was both encouraging and a catalyst for all NonStop users to look at their options. However, uLinga is more than just a replacement for either SNAX or ICE but is a step up when it comes to application to application communication involving NonStop and IBM Mainframes. While dependence upon APIs is preserved on both ends, there is now no need to retain traditional and legacy communications devices or support much older architectures. SNA applications continue to be in vogue but SNA networks are rapidly disappearing.

uLinga will shortly bring to market support for X25 over TCP/IP – XOT. This will further remove dependencies on traditional and legacy communications devices and will save money for those users with applications developed in support of X.25. However, there is another aspect of uLinga that is now gaining greater attention and that is the very framework of uLinga. uLinga is completely independent of the system it runs on – yes, it has become popular among the NonStop community but it can just as easily be run on other systems including Linux and Windows. uLinga was designed from the ground-up to be platform independent. The vast majority of the uLinga code-base is the same for every platform ensuring the stability and reliability of the code is preserved across platforms.

The significance of this is quickly becoming apparent as HPE develops its messages in support of one of its most significant strategic pillars – Hybrid IT. Recognizing the impact being felt within the enterprise as on-premise systems are being eclipsed by cloud computing and where there are numerous baby-steps being taken along the way, having options as to where to run the communications stack has certain advantages. With NonStop X there isn’t the talk there once was about performance – no NonStop X user has reported any concerns about performance to HPE as it really is a superior performing system to any previous iterations of NonStop – but costs and operational ease continue to be given more weight. When deciding where to run the communications stack, it may behoove a user to consider running it from a Linux system, for instance, that in turn may be supporting two or more discrete NonStop systems.

It is with the added emphasis being given to Hybrid IT that the independence from the operating system that uLinga provides has again re-entered into the conversation. With major events kicking off – eBITUG being the next big event taking place, but with other major events about to happen including HPE Discover in June, should this be something you would like to evaluate further then please reach out to the comForte team as they will be only too happy to discuss this with you. And of course, you can always contact me directly at our Infrasoft office.

STOP PRESS – Infrasoft and comForte are now calling for Beta candidates to trial the uLinga for X.25 (X.25 over TCP/IP – XOT) offering.

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