It’s going to be a good year for NonStop

Last month we opened our article in NonStop Insider with a number of observations concerning all that is new for NonStop. Like many others in the NonStop community we have been surprised by the speed with which NonStop development is executing as much as we have been surprised by the number of options becoming available to the NonStop user community. Any way you want to run NonStop then yes, you can do that. And we closed that opening paragraph by saying, cool – as it is so often said these days, particularly when it comes to NonStop, who would have thought?

This has led to a lot of fresh thinking taking place within the DataExpress team, some of which we covered in our latest post to our web sites NEWS / BLOG page. Foremost in our minds is the likelihood that by the end of the year we will be dealing with both physical NonStop systems – Itanium and x86 – as well as virtual NonStop systems running on a variety of of-the-shelf x86 servers. It is this later scenario that has us very much intrigued, and where we will be totally driven by whatever the NonStop user community elects to pursue, but already we are witnessing some very early investigation of vNonStop within our installed base.

In the post to our NEWS / BLOG we highlighted how we think that broadening the reach of NonStop, as vNonStop will surely do, is good news for all stakeholders in the NonStop community – users, vendors and just as importantly, HPE. And why wouldn’t DataExpress be excited – if anything it will help broaden the base of NonStop users and ultimately be responsible for considerable expansion of the base in the coming years. Furthermore, when it comes to the vendor community, it suggests that growth in NonStop usage will now happen in new and interesting ways, challenging us all to respond with further innovation. However, we are also watching the rollout of NonStop X systems and their deployments will likely influence the immediate decisions we take when it comes to our DataExpress NonStop (DXNS) product offering.

When it comes to NonStop X system deployments within the DXNS installed base we are planning on 2017 being a year of testing and staging. There are many NonStop users who will be cautious about migrating to NonStop X simply because it’s new and because it’s such a change from the previous decade of Itanium based systems. As much as these have proved to be good systems that have underpinned the operations of many financial institutions, their time is coming to an end and no, we aren’t expecting to see any further new models introduced. At this time, waiting for newer NB58000 systems with even faster Intel Itanium chips (the so named Kittson) isn’t as likely an outcome as some enterprises had thought just a year or so ago, although it may arrive simply as a matter of course based on what comes down the supply chain. But no, we see the NonStop development team very much focused on NonStop X.

The rate of take-up of NonStop X systems may go beyond just testing and staging should HPE provide enticements to move to NonStop X. Should such a program be initiated by HPE then the number of NonStop X systems should go up significantly as there are many financial institutions that are committed to running their solutions on the latest NonStop product offerings. Enticements would certainly make a difference and for some, there is also the understanding that migrating to NonStop X will simply ease any eventual move to vNonStop, making it less painful as NonStop development’s primary message is that if a solutions runs on NonStop X it will run on vNonStop. “It just works!” is the message coming from the NonStop development leadership. vNonStop may not be for everyone but for those users of smaller NonStop systems, this may indeed prove to be an attractive alternative!

To better understand where NonStop product management and development are taking NonStop in the short term, DataExpress will be heading back to Palo Alto in March for the 2017 NonStop Partner Symposium. This was a new event HPE launched last year and, by all accounts, it was a success so we plan on attending once again. The informality and openness of the NonStop team members in attendance was refreshing and it certainly goes a long way to ensuring our continued commitment to NonStop systems. We expect that there will be more information provided on vNonStop, particularly on how exactly it will be distributed and at what price points, but NonStop X news will still be of primary importance for every vendor in attendance. 2017 and perhaps early 2018 may be the period where we see a major movement to NonStop X and we want to hear a lot more about just how well that rollout is progressing.

We will also be present at a number of upcoming RUG events where like everyone else in the NonStop community we are hoping to hear more about NonStop X experiences from the users and if you happen to fall into this camp, then don’t forget to give us a call or drop us an email – we are very interested in hearing from anyone who is planning the migration to NonStop X.

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