New models for secure, managed file transfer

New systems, new modes of deployment – virtual as well as real – new solutions and new markets! If you happened upon a discussion involving NonStop customers you may be shocked by what you hear being discussed. Shocked, but maybe not surprised. HPE has made it no secret that it has upped its investment in NonStop, even as it embraced openness from the metal to the APIs just as it has deployed NonStop with NS SQL/MX internally for its own use and where HPE IT is pioneering virtual NonStop as it delivers NS SQL/MX on the basis of a DBaaS! Cool – as it is so often said these days, particularly when it comes to NonStop, who would have thought?

As we watch participation in recent NonStop product roadmap presentations it’s clear that NonStop product management has renewed energy in all that is present on their roadmap. There were times when fault tolerance wasn’t even referenced. At other times, Pathway was buried deep beneath acronyms and where the line between OS and TP became blurred. And then there was the database – it was slow, functionally poor and oh yes, relatively expensive.

But no longer and this energy is flowing out into the vendor community and thoughts of exploring platforms apart from NonStop has lessened somewhat. In talking to our compatriots, it’s clear that almost all of them have some products running on Linux / Unix / Windows (LUW) which has proved to be a positive direction. Now, with hybrids, big data, clouds and the end point revolution brought about by smartphones and tablets, to see NonStop fully engaged once again in the bigger IT world at large is an impressive thing to see.

At DataExpress we have championed the need for secure managed file transfers to be supported by both NonStop and LUW – we have deployed DataExpress NonStop (DXNS) and DataExpress Open Platform (DXOP) at many customer sites. And now the energy we expended in support of hybrid infrastructure is putting us in a very special place – the bourgeoning X-as-a-Service marketplace. Whether you might think of DXNS and DXOP as infrastructure or solutions software matters little in the end. Being able to tap either one of them on an as needed basis however, has caught the attention of the DataExpress team.

At this point in time and given our NonStop market has been heavily influenced by financial services companies, we have seen a very slow uptick of interest in NonStop X. And that is to be expected given the conservative nature of banking and the regulatory environment within which they operate. However, there is considerable talk among the NonStop field organization as well as with the NonStop vendor community about accelerating the push into completely new markets – some markets where NonStop once dominated, but others too, that are emerging as a byproduct of the smartphone revolution including automobiles and retail. Naturally, as 2017 unfolds, DataExpress is keen to hear more about these new HPE markets but from a DX perspective, even for a single file transfer version, it’s the same product that needs to be installed on NonStop X that already runs on NonStop I, which would provide ongoing low-cost scalability opportunities for any customer.

Commercial considerations notwithstanding, the more we see NonStop development talk up the benefits of virtual NonStop (vNonStop), the more excited we become. The great news is that we have always been able to tailor the cost of our products for lower volume transfer opportunities, on smaller footprint machines etc., so we can adjust as appropriately as the (new customer) market would require. You prefer to run DataExpress as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (Iaas) then send us an email! And what we can confirm today is that both DXNS and DXOP could be configured to run from within the cloud, and be engaged as a service – again, you are reading this first here, in NonStop Insider!

DataExpress has the infrastructure here in our own offices to set up a pilot project for just this type of scenario, which could be moved into a more secured and redundant location at any time. We are even prepared to offer the management of such a service where a customer could tell us they have xxx files in yyy location to be sent daily/weekly/monthly to zzz and we could set it all up for them and manage it end to end. And we could do it for multiple customers. Remember our software can reach out and “get” files as well as “push” files, so the customer could even be totally non-IT knowledgeable.

With the New Year just starting we are open to considering whatever approach you would like to take with NonStop and with whatever solution you would like to run. You will find us very approachable and creative in providing a solution that works for you so let us know – we have the code in place together with the experience and a strong working relationship with HPE. As we have seen from the energy being generated by the NonStop community we have the sense that there aren’t any boundaries to how you might run NonStop. There’s a lot of creative juices in evidence at any RUG meeting you might chose to attend – so yes, drop us an email and let us be your file mover of record.

sales@dataexpress.com | +1.972.899.3476
http://www.dataexpress.com