NonStop TBC 2024 has delivered!

NonStop leadership was on display at one evening gathering hosted by NTI:
can you make out Karen, Henry, Casey, Andrew, Kristi among those talking NonStop?

It only seems to be an over-reach relying on words that suffer from overexposure, but when it comes to the gathering of the NonStop community for their NonStop TBC Conference each year, NonStop TBC 2024 delivered everything that could be expected. Yes, it was a very cool event. Not just for the early morning fogs that dissipated mid-morning or for the chilly walk to the conference center but rather, for the positive variation of the word. So much was covered in this golden anniversary year for NonStop systems.

As we look back at our collective stock of NonStop and the former Tandem Computers and at the many celebratory tee-shirts and coffee mugs, perhaps the coolest moment of all was the presence and distribution of two handled mugs and tee-shirts embossed with messages like, “celebrating 50 years of innovation,” as well as “50 years of NonStop: TBC by the Sea.” And did you manage to secure for yourself our drink coasters celebrating 50 years while introducing our theme for 2025 first introduced at NonStop TBC 24, “Save time, save money, save NonStop!”

Product Manager, Mark Pollans, may have peppered his talk with the now predictable “Oooohs and Ahhhhs” but, in previous occasions, they ensured audience participation. The only regret NTI might have had was suggesting to our audience an appreciative “Coooool” response. Maybe next time. Stay tuned to see and hear for yourself at future 2025 events in Dublin and much later Houston. But being cool in 2024 places lots of demands on those creating content. Furthermore, and somewhat reluctantly, addressing a NonStop audience somewhat jaded by an almost constant stream of innovative solutions, presenters do need to go the extra yards to deliver coolness that attendees would recognize.

Reluctant, as audiences might have been in the past, as NTI dived into what’s new for the company and its product portfolio – yes, there was new messaging, new products, new partnerships and new customers but covering these topics is what attendees expect when attending any NonStop TBC conference. Pursuing modernization, delivering on resilience, providing a broader scope of platform options – the slate was full when the NonStop team took to the stage. Keeping up with the rate of change taking place across the NonStop development teams meant the NonStop vendor community had to work hard to keep up. And we at NTI were pleased to deliver alignment on all counts.

This year, NTI followed their high-level marketing presentation with an in-depth examination of how well they met a customer’s needs to migrate from Oracle GoldenGate to NTI DRNet®/Unified. Delivering a timely migration well in advance of competitive offering’s pursuits, not only did this fuel the development of a new DRNet®/Unified product – DRNet®/Unified for GoldenGate Conversion – but it added a “new logo” to the NTI customer list.

New products and new customers represent the cornerstone upon which messaging can be created. It is also the opening gambit in more ambitious programs to work with other NonStop vendors and this was a topic covered not only in the marketing presentation of Tuesday but also by the support organization directly engaged in helping this latest addition to the NTI customer list modernize their operations with DRNet®/Unified. Introduced by Tim Dunne, NTI’s Global Director Worldwide Sales, and delivered by Trevor Hill, EMEA Solutions Consultant, this technical session obviously generated its fair share of “cooool!

But being cool can only carry you so far. You need substance along with whatever it is that could be considered cool and in the push for modernization, support of open-source and industry-standard APIs, services and utilities become a must. Following the introduction of DRNet®/Unified for HPE Customers, support of Kafka was introduced and alpha and beta tests followed. While the product delivered on the promise of Kafka interfaces, NonStop customers wanted much more. Turning to the authority on all thing’s protocols and services, Infrasoft, NTI has integrated uLinga for Kafka into DRNet®/Unified for Kafka such that this newly announced product is powered by uLinga.

Fully tested and ready for deployment with the key component of bidirectional Kafka support in final test, this represents just one more of cool steps taken by the NTI team. Turning to specialists while remaining focused on the Change Data Capture (CDC) properties of DRNet®/Unified, brings new solutions to meet growing customer requirements we believe represents a smart move on our part. There’s no question that no vendor can do it all and in working with Infrasoft, NTI is simply following the earlier steps taken with TANDsoft to bring even smarter utilities to NTI’s customer base.

As for new messaging, the possibility of missing out on what that might be couldn’t be more easily seen than when walking into the partner pavilion. A banner that greeted all attendees simply said, Save Time! Save Money! Save NonStop! A simple message but the implication couldn’t’ have been more direct. Modernization is an important pursuit but if reducing the overall TCO is neglected, the appeal of NonStop to any enterprise may diminish faster than the evening’s first adult beverage. What NTI has committed to pursue is a more openly competitive pricing model where perhaps the most important ingredient happens to be “no additional fees for DRNet®/Unified.”

Cool? Yes, seriously cool. Want to have the freshest (Jeff Kyle) and cleanest (Kirk Bresniker) data delivered to a thousand instances of Oracle? No problem, only a single charge for DRNet®/Unified for HPE Customers. Or DRNet®/Unified for GoldenGate Conversion. Or even for DRNet®/Unified for Business Integration where DRNet®/Unified for Kafka can be found. In this manner, NTI makes a major contribution not only to a reduced TCO but perhaps the biggest incentive of all to modernize NonStop and have it be an active participant across all of an enterprises’ IT infrastructure.

If you were hesitant in stopping by our table to hear more about the success of NTI with our DRNet® product portfolio, then reach out to us by phone or email. We would be only too happy to field any questions you may have. And yes, ask us about how we Save Time! Save Money! Save NonStop!

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
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