NTI: Growing the ecosystem of NonStop vendors while proving adaptation holds the key to successful NonStop solution deployments

In our formative years how many times did we hear words similar to these ? Whether it was at home, at school or in our workplace, there have been many times when our endeavors really did benefit from the interruption by someone more familiar with the task at hand. Just how many of us are still capable of routine maintenance on our car or even replacing damaged roof tiles? Wherever you turn, you have access to folks who are better skilled at what you contemplated doing and for the most part, you welcome their expertise.

When it comes to technology and in particular IT the breadth of capabilities has grown to where very few IT professionals would ever suggest that they know it all. Coverage of everything, from hardware to networks and storage to the software stack and the applications is not only proving difficult, but in the extreme, impossible to address. This is not to fault those with expertise to share in one area or another but to simply recognize that with the breadth of capabilities we see today, there is value in accessing the knowledge and real world experiences of those whose commitment to the areas in question exceeds anything we may be able to find in-house.

Vendor partnerships are flourishing today. We refer to them as groups, as we often do within the NonStop community, or simply as knowledge-in-common associations, the better known term today is ecosystem. Across the NonStop community, there is a long tradition of ecosystems with solutions vendors like ACI for instance assembling a collection of vendors that addressed specific functional areas that their BASE24 solution did not address out-of-the-box. It is within this context of value add that comes with ecosystems that NTI continues to foster relationships with other well-known NonStop vendors to better address adjacent areas whether it is product or services related.

Having already built relationships with TANDsoft for product, CSP and comforte – themselves in partnerships together – for security and TCM, Odyssey and Kuvasz for services in specific markets, a new relationship has just been established, this time with U.S Consulting Services, Inc. Access to consulting and in particular to hiring staff is an area many NonStop users have asked us to address in the past.

“For 19 years our staffing specialists have built teams to help implement world class solutions for customers in industries such as financial, retail, healthcare, manufacturing, and more,” said Pat Hill, VP North American Division at US Consulting Services.  “Our exclusive specialty has been the Tandem – HPE NonStop Platform – and today, U.S. Consulting Services is the largest and most highly regarded Tandem Consulting practice in the United States. Our staff of highly trained recruiters and technical sales associates specifically target hard to find programmers, architects, business analysts, QA testers and system engineers who possess the specific skills required to work on the Tandem – HPE NonStop platform.” 

Relying solely on ourselves to do any IT task is a high-risk proposition whichever way you look at it. With as many mandates, standards, advisories as exist today in what has become a hostile technology world is not news to members of the NonStop community. “There may be times where our users express concerns over a practice or methodology or even deployment and in building out our ecosystem, NTI is becoming the go-to NonStop vendor for addressing these concerns,” said Tim Dunne, NTI’s Global Director Worldwide Sales. “We have been good friends with Pat Hill and the team at U.S. Consulting Services and embracing them within our ecosystem was a logical move on the part of both companies.”

There remain other NonStop vendors where discussions are still ongoing and it is the desire of the NTI management team to create a collection of services that ultimately place the participants on a level footing with what the HPE NonStop team has assembled. The history of NonStop, indeed its very success through the decades, has been based on the presence of multiple vendors providing product opening up the selection process to choice. “The advantages of having options has always been important for the NonStop user,” said Tim Dunne, “and NTI is firmly in the camp of more is better when it comes to what options are available to NonStop users.”

The marketplace has changed significantly for NonStop with HPE is evolving its technology and platform delivery options. This is driving the need for NonStop vendors to adapt right along with those changes. NTI has had a rich product and feature offering in support of Business Continuity and our presence onsite at some of the biggest NonStop users today has given rise to NTI broadening its capabilities. Continuing with the single code base and relying on Change Data Capture (CDC) methodologies, NTI’s flagship DRNet®/Unified has achieved success in replicating to third party databases including Oracle and DB2, and to a number of message brokers including Kafka, Splunk, ELK and more. With the steady stream of changes taking place even as others are rushing to evolve to the degree of functionality afforded the NonStop user today with DRNet®/Unified, NTI is embracing Continuous Adaptation.

Expect to hear more of where this is leading NTI in upcoming presentation at user events throughout 2023. At the upcoming E-BITUG in Edinburgh, Scotland, Continuous Adaptation will be the theme of the presentation by Pyalla Technologies, LLC Cofounder, Richard Buckle.

If you are planning on attending this first major event of the year, make sure you plan on attending this session as it is the first Plenary Session of the opening day immediately following HPE talking about strategy and direction (for NonStop). No, it isn’t always wise to do things yourself and likewise, doing so with knowledge that there are resources that are readily available and willing to help is often simply an exercise in futility. With NTI today and the partnerships it has established and the adaptation it has embraced, there should be no hesitation on the part of any NonStop user reaching out to the NTI team. 

If there are upcoming projects where the replication, integration and distribution of data has become a priority or a need to replace an older, outdated replication product is in your plan and   you would like to know more about DRNet®/Unified and how it might meet your immediate business needs, simply call the number below or email us at any time at:

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