New Column: NonStop CEO’s Have Their Say – Tony Craig, TCM

This month Nonstop Insider kicked off a new special feature and took some time to talk to TCM’s Managing Director Tony Craig to ask him about all things NonStop:

What is the business of TCM and what do you do in the NonStop community?

TCM has been in business for over 21 years dedicated to providing truly cost effective, successful HPE NonStop services to some of the world’s largest NonStop users. In that 21 years, TCM has never failed an SLA – we are not aware of any other company that can state this and we are proud of the 100’s of great references we have received from our clients.

TCM’s range of NonStop services include: on-site and remote systems management, consultancy across the full range of HPE NonStop products; security audits, migrations, project management and a lot more – in other words; TCM is truly the only dedicated one-stop-shop for NonStop.

Today TCM has seen an increase in demand for their Cloud-based Systems Management, where TCM takes full responsibility for their clients NonStop systems around the world. This can include a package for 24 x 7 Systems Management or be tailored to include a range of cost effective add-on services.  Services are provided remotely or on-site, or a mix thereof – it’s entirely up to the client.

This provides NonStop users with complete piece-of-mind that their crown-jewel systems are being professionally looked after by a dedicated NonStop team.

Why are we seeing this demand?

It’s simple, clients are realising that their in-house support solutions are prone to risk, key knowledge staff retiring, unscheduled absences, staff sickness, etc. all lead to risk. They realise that NonStops are critical and need expert 24 x 7 support without fail. TCM’s solutions remove any risk with guaranteed continuity of support from one of the largest NonStop expert teams in the world. Clients no longer have worries of where to get NonStop support, training issues, retention issues. Our clients are very happy with the services they receive from TCM, and pleasantly surprised that a TCM solution costs less than their in-house solution.

And, best of all, we continue to provide these 24 x 7 services from our NonStop Centre of Excellence based in Scotland, at a cost base which is cheaper than our client’s previous in-house solution!

What have you learnt about NonStop this year that has you excited for the future of NonStop?

I think whereas last year NonStop X was the big reveal, this last year has been all about Virtual. TCM is very excited about Virtualised NonStop and see a great many opportunities for NonStop users to apply this technology to great advantage. In general, we are just happy to see investment in the platform and that the right people are being given the opportunity to take NonStop further. Quite simply, the future look bright for nonStop … and TCM.

What is the status of your work with NonStop X? And, do you see NonStop customers planning on upgrading to NonStop X?

Today we are involved in a number of discussions with our clients looking at NonStop X migrations. There is a great demand for these systems, for good reason, and many NonStop users are planning to upgrade in the very near future. We are assessing what is best for our clients who are looking to upgrade and planning out how best to achieve this, both in terms of time, cost and availability. We’re extremely well versed in upgrades/migrations, having been responsible for numerous such projects over the last 21 years. We follow a tried and tested project methodology aimed at providing peace of mind for the client, yet retaining enough built-in flexibility to react to changes – which are inevitable in any NonStop project! To date we have never overrun on a NonStop migration. And we don’t plan to lose this record any time soon.

What role do you anticipate seeing for the new Virtualized NonStop within the traditional NonStop community? Will you be ready?

We embrace Virtualised NonStop and firmly believe this is a great offering for the NonStop community and we are working closely with HPE to explore the future of Virtualised NonStop. We are certainly looking at this for a number of our customers where we believe it would be a perfect fit.  Some of these are smaller NonStop users who are looking to upgrade but have budget challenges.  These customer are looking to TCM to provide a Complete Solution where TCM will manage and host their application through the provision of “Infrastructure as a Service” (IaaS) based on a Virtualised NonStop solution or part thereof, be it for Test, Development or Production environments.  Due to the potential cost efficiencies this approach can deliver, we expect to see a number of new NonStop users who want, and need, the reassurance of NonStop but at a lower cost point. We at TCM are working hard to make it easier than ever for an organisation to choose NonStop as their mission-critical platform.

Tony Craig | Managing Director | TCM

tony.craig@tcm.uk.com | www.tcm.uk.com | +44 7779 888789

Watch this space for more views and insights from people at the top of NonStop!