Pyalla Technologies …For HPE with NonStop is now virtually free to innovate!

When it came time to write this article last year, I wrote with some passion about how good it felt to be “still in the game.” This was a reference to a song by Stevie Windwood, a veritable child prodigy when it comes to rock music when at age 15 he was part of the group, Spencer Davis Group, (remember “Gimme Some Lovin’” and “I’m A Man”) before cofounding Traffic (you may even recall “Feelin’ Alright” and “Freedom Rider).” Then in 1969 – now a serious 21 year old – he joined Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker (both of Cream fame) and Rick Grech in forming the truly first rock supergroup, Blind Faith, (“Can’t Find My Way Home” and “Had to Cry Today).” One year on, and I am observing that as a community we are not only still in the game (with no thoughts of crying today), but yes, we are feeling alright!

The traditional holiday season spanning mid-December through to mid-January are now behind us and we are already focusing on 2020. Yes this truly is the year where we should be enjoying 20/20 eyesight, a reference to having a “sharpness of vision!” To say I like this might miss the point – we are coming off a five year transformation period for NonStop and now it’s all about delivery. It’s about accelerated migration pursuits together with opportunities to modernize the solutions we deploy as well as the individual applications we develop. It’s about the journey to a virtualized world where any enterprise installing the Intel x86 architecture servers and where VMware is installed can now turn to NonStop for their mission critical applications. It’s also where any enterprise accessing Microsoft SQL Server via JDBC can disconnect from Microsoft and reconnect to NonStop with NSaaS providing a more complete 24×7 database as a service offering.

Looking back at the events of 2014 and 2015 when NonStop X and then virtualized NonStop made their first appearances it is hard to ignore just how transformational these times were – it was almost as if the whole NonStop community was holding their collective breaths wondering what would be announced next. Well, the attention of the community was given another bolt of reality when the VMs / Hypervisor focus was shifted from OpenStack with KVM (KVM turning the Linux kernel into a hypervisor) to the more commercially successful VMware. All the while NonStop development was working on a Virtualized Converged NonStop system – what became the NS2 and featured a Debian distribution of Linux that came with its own hypervisor. Watching the NonStop attendees at a NonStop Technical Boot Camp held at that time crowded around essentially a table-top fully functioning NonStop system running virtualized was a momentous occasion for all attendees.  Who could have imagined that just five years prior, none of this was known to the community and more importantly still, how rapidly NonStop development could turn vision into reality and ship production-worthy hardware and software?

Very few industry experts ever claim to have 20/20 vision when it comes to IT. Large industry analysis vendors are only too happy to provide in-depth opinion papers on trends and forecasts for the coming year and even decade but provide as many caveats as there are analysts in their organization. It’s all too easy to get wrapped up in the latest technology offering to be able to pull back and look at the bigger picture. Take for instance cloud computing and what will evolve in 2020 – cloud unplugged, if you like. The picture of a cloudless future is becoming a lot clearer as understanding grows that this is purely a reference to the ubiquity of clouds – they will be everywhere and this explosion of presence of clouds will most likely be driven by a desire to move the cloud to where the data is. And we all know, NonStop is where data is created.

In case you missed it, an article published December 23, 2019, in The Register featured quotes by HPE CEO Antonio Neri under the heading of HPE goes on the warpath, seeks to scalp AWS over vendor lock-in. This article drew material from the recent HPE Discover event in Munich, Germany. According to The Register it was Neri who first said that contrary to early claims from the likes of AWS, the cloud is not democratizing IT, nor is it an open environment, just the latest form of vendor lock-in. More importantly, Neri then said:

“The first message there is I think [AWS] has finally recognized the world is hybrid.”

“The world is hybrid and apps and data live everywhere, and so for them to continue to drive the growth they need to bring the cloud to the data.”

According to HPE’s estimates, three-quarters of data will be created outside of the data center and outside of the cloud, at the “edge” – everywhere else except the bit barn or the cloud.

“It is cheaper and physically easier to move the cloud to where the data is, not the data to where the cloud is. What the public cloud really wants is your data, [providers] don’t care about your workloads, and so once you check your data in the public cloud you are kind of locked in, it is like checking into Hotel California – you check in and you never check out.”

It’s fitting that we end Neri’s quotes with his reference to yet another popular group, The Eagles. And it’s fitting too that we end with a reference to perhaps the most popular song of all time emanating from America’s west coast. Of all the visionary statements that we should remember during 2020 is that whatever else we may think of the giant cloud solutions vendors there is the real downside of lock-in. NonStop’s proven versatility when it comes to hypervisors should not be overlooked and while there is considerable price to be paid each and every time NonStop development supports yet one more hypervisor, it’s worth noting that they remain very much customer driven in this regard. You want to run on the most commercially successful VM – you got it; NonStop supports VMware! You need a development and test virtualized NonStop – you got it; NS2! No matter which way you want to look at it – NonStop development continues to pull rabbits from its collective hats and who knows what might appear next!

I guess we will all just have to wait to see what more news comes from the NonStop team in 2020 but for now, even for those possessing the very best 20/20 vision, when it comes to cloud computing, cloud at the edge, cloud without lock-in then it’s all about freedom. And with that all I can add is that yes, the NonStop community is becoming Freedom Rider(s) with more choices available to them than could have been imagined just five year ago. Happy New Year and all the best for 2020!

Richard Buckle
Cofounder and CEO
Pyalla Technologies, LLC