IR: Putting NonStop on show; greater visibility provides greater insight

Spring holidays are upon us and for those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, we are welcoming the first signs that the seasons are changing. For those of us living alongside the Colorado Rockies, it’s been a year where we have lived through a dozen snowstorms the last reaching record levels in some areas. However, recent warm weather comes as a reminder that those long cold nights of winter may be ending.

For IR it is a time for coming to terms with NonStop systems that continue to evolve and for that, we are pleased with how well our new message is being received – Creating clarity and insight in a world of connected devices. Have you visited our site of late? What remains a constant is the explosion of connected devices and what the spring holidays are reinforcing for many is just how dependent we have become on tools like TEAMS and ZOOM that let us stay in touch, no matter our own situation. As the vaccines are gaining ground and our confidence that this global pandemic may be in retreat is rising, we are still approaching any social interaction with caution. More often than not it is the virtual world where you will find us spending much of our time.

When it comes to the message we are communicating, it is focused on Prognosis: the product and the platform. This was covered in some detail in our last article to NonStop Insider, IR: Creating clarity and insight in a world of connected devices where you will read about the introduction of three solution brands: IR Collaborate, IR Transact and IR Infrastructure. This was the subject of that issues’ editorial where Managing Editor Margo Holen made reference to our updated web pages:

“IR talks about its web site evolving and ‘If this proves to be a prompt to check out our web site then it’s equally as important to understand our vision: Creating clarity and insight in a world of connected devices. It’s right there on the home page and for the NonStop community where the presence of NonStop systems within an enterprise data center is more often than not one of many systems, all connected.’” 

In a virtual world, there are no limits. The elasticity of provisioning that comes with the cloud experience has made it easy to add virtual machines more or less at will. Endpoints too can be any number at all as more intelligence is added to devices every day. Support for analytics is paramount when it comes to oversight of the virtual world with its proliferation of end points and edge processors. What COVID-19 has reinforced is that everyone wants to be working from home and be always connected but the challenge remains, management and monitoring needs analytics to better protect from unwarranted intrusions.

There is a reason why NonStop continues to maintain its presence within the data center, particularly when it comes to supporting mission-critical applications including many of those in support of payments. It has to do with security. NonStop has a long history of protecting these mission critical applications from bad actors determined to penetrate NonStop systems. It’s all well and good to support an endless world of virtual devices but do you have the visibility and indeed the insight into whom and why every one of those endpoints is connected to your network?

When it comes to providing clarity and insight in a world of connected devices, ensuring uncompromised interactions is vital. According to a Gartner report published in August 18, 2020 Critical Capabilities for Unified Endpoint Management Tools Published “Management alone of endpoint devices is rarely enough to identify and mitigate security issues, such as data leakage and device compromise, and to provide monitoring and alerting. The increased focus on analytics and endpoint security capabilities in this analysis emerges as more buyers demand deeper security capabilities and a strong link between endpoint management and endpoint security tools.”

COVID-19 has also ensured we have become dependent upon tools like TEAMS and ZOOM as much as we used to rely on email and texting. To this end we have purposely focused on areas where Prognosis provides value with three solutions – IR Collaborate, IR Transact and IR Infrastructure.IR Infrastructure is self-explanatory as it is perhaps the solution that has been in the market the longest and is familiar to all who are engaged in operating NonStop systems.

For those in the NonStop community who utilize the key attributes of NonStop in support of payments processing, IR Transact will also look familiar. As for ZOOM and TEAMS support than clearly, their users are being targeted by IR Collaborate whose origins lie with the work previously done in support of VoIP and where the initial work came out of a deep port of Prognosis to open platforms. Work undertaken by IR has resulted in the decoupling of the underlying Prognosis platform from the solutions. In so doing, Prognosis became the logical choice for security as it is where Prognosis administrators determine users’ access to key components such as database, thresholds, analytics, configurations and commands.

Irrespective of the solutions deployed be that IR Collaborate, IR Transact and IR Infrastructure endpoints and edge processing can be fully protected. Perhaps with no limits in a virtual world, management and monitoring end-to-end mandates insights being provided that go deep into securing IT operations. This is now an integral part of the Prognosis solution portfolio and the NonStop community is a major beneficiary. If this is still news to you and your enterprise, again, please check out our web site for a complete view into what Prognosis now provides.

Should you have any questions or would like to learn more, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your IR sales team. We look forward to addressing any topic that may be of interest to you and your enterprise.

Kevin Johnson,
VP Sales – Payments Performance Monitoring
www.ir.com