NTI – a strategy for DRNet® that smooths the way to the new “data” frontier!

There was a time not that long ago when wagon trains pulled onto the Oregon Trail; settlers seeking a new life as they traversed the wild frontier that lay ahead of them. Likewise, it was those intrepid early settlers who participated in the Oklahoma Land Rush in the late nineteenth century when two million acres were thrown open on essentially first come, first served basis and it was tough going for many of these settlers as they looked to farm this new frontier. Indeed venturing further west of the Mississippi was considered problematic for many with the eyes set on building something new. Anything “West of the Pecos” was viewed by many as lawless and of course, there was always the Badlands of the Dakotas to cross. There was a reason, after all, that this portion of the United States was called the Wild West.

While many of our images of the frontier lands that made up the Wild West have been formed by the movies and television shows we watched over the years and another film version of the shootout at the OK Corral is bound to appear soon. Since its inception, IT has had to deal almost continuously with new frontiers. It may not be anything like the Wild West of old and yet, for many CIOs and IT managers, it was only a decade or so ago that they faced the free-wheeling dot.com era and the browser wars and before that, the rise of Unix and the router wars that finally saw Cisco emerge victorious. Of course, for those who look even further back to a time before SQL and true relational databases, there were the data base wars that pitted such vendors as Cullinane, Insyte Datacom, Software A.G., Cincom and several other purveyors of database management systems in a serious knock-down drag-out contest with IBM.

For the NonStop community, facing new frontiers is nothing new nor is taking on serious challenges mounted by competitors – as the 1980s came to a close there had been many competitors the then-Tandem Computers had to face and overcome. How fitting then that today the new NonStop systems are facing another frontier – a truly virtualized world where excitement over all things cloud related dominates the discussions of the press, industry analysts, and a multitude of consultants. Hybrid clouds, private clouds and public clouds managed or otherwise seem to be holding out a bright, tantalizing future for enterprises everywhere and into this new Wild West enters NonStop with its virtualized NonStop (vNS) offering. Perhaps not the sole driving force behind embracing vNS, but all the signs are there that it comes down to how best to process and store the enormous amounts of data that is arriving at the front gates of every imaginable enterprise, no matter the industry vertical or geographic region.

For NTI, it has become very much a case of it being all about the data. For some time now, NTI has been championing a message centered on data that covers the enterprise need to replicate data, integrate data and to transform and enrich data. DRNet® is at the very heart of all that NTI provides and behind DRNet® is the Change Data Capture (CDC) model NTI pioneered on NonStop and it today empowers its diverse mix of product offerings. “There will always be a need to replicate data to ensure disasters of any type don’t take down an enterprise,” said Tim Dunne, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales, NTI. “But that’s just a starting point. Once we have captured data we can send it off to a replicated site or simply push it to another database or even to multiple databases. And there is the opportunity to enrich critical data along the way. As for entering a new frontier then this is very much the case for nearly all our DRNet® customers – never has the number of options open to them been any wider!”

NTI’s expanded product set is only the beginning and there will be more to follow as the company builds out its own global network of vNS systems on hardware yet to be determined. In all likelihood, this will underpin NTI’s move into providing a cloud out of which the NonStop user community will be able to select products to consume on an as-needed basis. More importantly, according to Dunne, is that “NTI will be providing access to experienced professionals to help DRNet® customers navigate the Wild West and to help them embrace new frontiers to better grow their business. So yes, be assured, we have the people!” This will be the subject of many NTI presentations in 2019 and with SunTUG now only a matter of weeks away, this somewhat informal kick-off of RUG events worldwide for 2019 will see a strong presence by NTI personnel. Should you be attending SunTUG then make sure you come and talk to us about DRNet® and let us help you dodge all the arrows and bullets that will undoubtedly by flying overhead as businesses everywhere cross over to the new frontier where data will rule the day.

635 Park Meadow Road, Suite 209Network Technologies International, Inc., Westerville, Ohio 43081-2877

Phone: +1 (614) 794-6000

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

Phone: +353 (91) 463086