NonStop TBC 2024 has delivered!

As we look back at all the transpired in 2024 it is with a greater sense of renewed enthusiasm that will be a hallmark of all we do in 2025. By this, recognising it will be a significant year for the HPE NonStop team with new hardware offerings just over the horizon, we are already sensing that the coming year will be one of transformation. So much has been written about digitial transformation, pivoting towards capitalization on the information created on NonStop and the likely impact from early inroads being made into the world of analytics and AI.

It would be grossly irreverant of us to suggest that NonStop applications will suddenly emerge as the feeding ground for critical data harvesting, but then again, it cannot be ruled out entirely. In 2024 we wrote of how clean and fresh data appears first on NonStop. We also caught on to a new rallying call for the NonStop community; Can’t stop, Won’t stop, NonStop! It was also a time when TS/MP (aka Pathway) gained greater accpetance as a relaible alternate to open cluster orchestration offerings leading to the observation of TS/MP being the “special sauce” that makes NonStop effectively your OneStop cloud-in-a-box solution.

The mere fact that we talk about the benefits of NonStop and of how it continues to lead technically in a world where information is flooding the marketplace over just how viable cloud services are to the average enterprise customers. But fortunanately wiser heads within customer IT organizations are tempering the cloud hype with the reality. Paying for and securing commitments made to cloud service providers are being subject to intense scrutiny with many enterprise openly promoting cloud repatriation of cloud-based application that they are pursuing. It also seems nothing screams modernization more than capitalizing on the cloud experience from within the IT organization.

At NTI we have been sensitive to this changing landscape for the past couple of years. Put it down to a finely-tuned intuition or simply call it experience – either way, we have been at the forefront of change when it comes to leveraging the transformation taking place with respect to data and application integration and are responding in like. No rock may be an island but certainly for NTI, it is proving that no NonStop system is an entirety of itself. The world of IT is hybrid and everything is connected. What a surprise? If you like labels then think of NonStop as being an instrumental cog in the giant information-age machine driving IT for the benefit of  the enterprie.

Preparing for what lies ahead and addressing the most immediate needs of the enterprise in the world of hybrid IT, NTI has formed a relationship with Infrasoft. The folks who many know “own networking” are joing forces with the folks who know what networks can deliver. For a number of years NTI through its support for protocols such as JDBC (for data) and JSON (for messaging) has had it’s foot in the water, testing the temperature of IT’s taste for greater integation of NonStop into the rest of IT.

This has lead to the packaging of DRNet®/Unified for HPE Customers that included support for both JDBC (passage to open database offerings – e.g. DB2, Oracle, MySQL and more) and JSON (passage to those platforms searching, analyzing, and monitoring machine-generated data – e.g. Splunk, ELK, Kafka and more). However, this toe in the water led to surprising results. DRNet®/Unified for HPE Customers are happily passing data to Oracle via JDBC even as they began evaluating popular platforms in support of data pipelines and streaming applications. What is not surprising or unexpected is how these NonStop customers wanted more once their toes had gotten deeper into the waters.

In 2024 at various conferences and events it was revealed how NTI was creating a relationship with Infrasoft. Not just at the sales and marketing level but going much deeper, embracing cooperative development. What has appeared as the 2024 began now is disappearing in our rearview mirrors was DRNet®/Kafka. This takes support for Kafka out of DRNet® much further than was introduced all that time ago to where together, DRNet®/Kafka, powered by uLinga for Kafka, not only delivers a data pipeline but also streams data to those databases designed to consume enormous amounts of data. What the industry calls Time Series Databases that include the likes of Prometheus among many others. And why? It is these databases that feed analytics processes as well as AI.

“We have been engaged with NonStop customers with our earlier product offering as part of DRNet®/Unified for Business Integration but quickly realized that we needed to do much more to fully address the opportunities presented to NTI,” said Tim Dunne, NTI’s Global Director of Worldwide Sales, following the release of DRNet®/Kafka – powered by uLinag for Kafka. “Knowing as we do the skillsets of the Infrasoft team and the speed with which Infrasoft delivers quality solutions, it needed little time on the part of NTI to realize the value that could be unlocked by working together. Infrasoft has a proven track record and a consistent presence as thought leaders and technology savvy.”

One beneficial side benefit of the relationshp with Infrasoft was identifying yet another NonStop customer requirment that could be best-addressed by uLinga. That is the modernization in the way NonStop applications, accessible through an enterprises’ IT network, can utilise much-needed APIs without pursuing radical surgery on their current applications. In subesquent conversaitons with Infrasoft, NTI quickly understood that there was a need to ensure access to modern APIs that only need configuration changes with no reengineering or solution overhaul.

“As we heard from our customers that there was a need to address modernization across the board and how it was proving difficult and expensive to modernize updating access via APIs to modern networks, we once again turned to our partner, Infrasoft, for a solution,” said Tim Dunne following announcement of NTI’s DRNet®/Unified for Application Integration – powered by uLinga Gateway. “Today, integrating applications within a hybrid IT world is an important aspect of any steps taken towards further modernization. With the availability of uLinga Gateway, and its inclusion within the DRNet®/Unified product portfolio as DRNet®/Unified for Application Integration, we have an immediate ability to address these customer requirements.”

If it has been a while since you last visited the NTI web site, you may want to download the data sheets for both of these additions to the NTI DRNet® product portfolio then turn to the Resources page and download the latest data sheets:

https://network-tech.com/datasheets

Should your plans also include cloud repatriation of applications even as you want to maintain a cloud experience for your enterprise but are curious about the best approach to take with regard to data streaming and access to modern APIs, all with minimal impact on your daily business performance and you missed the news about these products and have questions, then just reach out to us by email or phone via the contact information below. We look forward to hearing from you.

Sales@network-tech.com

Network Technologies International, Inc.
635 Park Meadow Road, Suite 209
Westerville, Ohio 43081-2877
Phone: +1 (614) 794-6000

N.T.I. Limited
Ard Mhuire
Camp Street
Oughterard
Co. Galway
H91 K5PE
Ireland