NonStop community expecting big things from HPE NonStop in 2017!

With 2017 now upon us, it’s time to look ahead at what we can expect to see coming from HPE and the NonStop group. A lot of announcements have been made over the course of the past two years and now 2017 is shaping up to be a year of deliverables. By this we mean, here at ETI-Net, that we will be watching just how successful NonStop will be in selling and installing the new systems even as we watch the demand for our premier product offering, BackBox, continue to grow right along with the success of NonStop.

When it comes to the newest member of the NonStop family, the NonStop X systems based on the Intel x86 architecture, BackBox has been certified for deployment on NonStop X systems and there have already been numerous BackBox systems shipped as part of the NonStop X offering. We see no lessening in demand for BackBox just as we anticipate that it is still very early days in the product lifecycle for NonStop X. As has been observed elsewhere in publications targeting the NonStop marketplace, the NonStop sales teams have continued selling the Itanium-based NonStop i systems to customers heavily invested in NonStop and it is our expectation that this trend will likely taper off in favor of increased sales of NonStop X, so 2017 could very well prove to be the year of NonStop X!

When it comes to other announcements from the NonStop group, clearly there’s a considerable interest in virtual NonStop (vNonStop). ETI-Net is expecting first customer shipments to happen sometime this year to those who would want to pilot the introduction of vNonStop into their development and test groups. This is a very exciting development for NonStop even as there will be many companies intrigued by its potential. As with other vendors we have talked, anything that helps grow demand for NonStop is a good thing for everyone in the NonStop community so we have similar expectations for vNonStop as we have for NonStop X, except that in 2017 it will be very much a case of evaluating vNonStop’s contribution at those companies with plans for including NonStop in hybrid and private cloud deployments.

In 2017 we will be announcing vBackBox for vNonStop. There will be a lot more to say about this new product from ETI-Net closer to the time of its availability but already ETI-Net is in discussion with HPE NonStop development over backup for vNonStop. The NonStop community is already familiar with BackBox as an external hardware controller (managed by NonStop resident software) that can connect to one or more NonStop servers (including NonStop X) and emulate dozens of tape devices – what is being emulated can be accessed by NonStop backup utilities (and tape catalogue systems) completely transparently with no code changes required. Adding support for BackBox to be accessed by these same utilities from out of vNonStop is a requirement we are aware of as whether data is on a real or virtual system, recovery of the data should disaster strike will always be a requirement of any modern data center.

This coming year also represents an opportunity to leverage our different backup technologies for various platform apart from NonStop X and vNonStop and this extended product portfolio is something we will be looking to presenting to our many customers where support for multiple platforms is a necessity. 2017 is a year where it’s not just about anticipation of new systems and software from HPE for NonStop that for everyone in the NonStop community suggests growth, but is a year where these customers can expect even more from ETI-Net. So when you see us at upcoming user events make sure you stop by and say Hi! And yes, find out more about what ETI-Net can do for your company.

Said Hini
said.hini@etinet.com (514) 663-0501
http://etinet.com/