Pyalla Technologies, LLC …Providing articles, commentaries and posts focused on HPE, Mission Critical Systems and NonStop

To be very candid, it looks like there is a sense of normality returning to our industry. That is, if you think the way we will work will increasing mirror our technology, that is. Talk about Hybrid IT, how about Hybrid Workforce? While some tech vendors are embracing a work from home model, other vendors, including Google, really do want everyone to come back to the office. The move out of Silicon Valley to places like Houston and Austin seems to be accelerating – we even have a major vendor moving to downtown Denver (as was the case with Palantir) – you might be led to believe that the future impact on tech out of Silicon Valley will be diminished.

There is even talk that Silicon Valley’s share of Venture Capital (VC) given to start ups is in decline with perhaps too many investors having left the valley. Surely, we can accept that Silicon Valley is “nothing more than a state of mind,” as TechCrunch once said. Having written my first article on the VC presence in the valley back in 1988 where I looked at VC operations as dispersed as Munich, Sydney, Japan and many others, it is rather amusing to continue to read of the potential demise of Silicon Valley and its decreasing influence on the industry as a whole. State of mind? Perhaps, but it is so much more. When it comes to its potential demise, nothing could be further from the truth – having spent a couple of days walking the streets of the Peninsula in 2020 and even taking into account the effects of COVID-19, Silicon Valley is alive and well and continues to be the home for many aggressive and innovative startups. More of that later in this update as we reference the good news for Striim.

The big news for Pyalla is that we are now more engaged with the NonStop community than ever before. We are building a new vendor web site where Margo and I are creating all the web pages’ contents. We renewed our commitment to NonStop Insider with the publisher and we are providing more content for The Connection. Seen the latest article, yet? We are also involved in providing content for HPE about which we are very excited. So, yes, normality may not have returned to our industry to reflect the way we used to work, but all around us there are signs that we are all simply “getting on with it!”

News from HPE:

This past month there has been a lot of news coverage of HPE Ezmeral Software. In case this fell from your radar, “the HPE Ezmeral portfolio provides customers with an end-to-end hybrid cloud analytics platform that improves quality, repeatability, throughput, and time to value for their AI/ML, analytics and data-intensive workloads.” What caught our attention was the following pulled from a recent news release:

The HPE Ezmeral software portfolio is a purpose-built, hybrid cloud platform for data science and analytics workloads for enterprises to build and accelerate their modern data analytics initiatives at scale. It is composed of a complete orchestrated Kubernetes container platform along with a built-in persistent storage layer and ML Ops for data science workflows.

The HPE Ezmeral portfolio plays an essential role in the HPE edge-to-cloud platform-as-a-service strategy. Combined with HPE GreenLake cloud services, which provide an agile, lower cost, and consistent cloud experience everywhere, customers can use the HPE Ezmeral software portfolio to rapidly transform and modernize all their applications and data, and streamline analytic workloads, all in an as-a-service model.

The Ezmeral ecosystem may be of little importance to the NonStop community even as there is a reference to GreenLake, the reference to containers and Kubernetes could be of interest to some members of the NonStop community while it represents a major investment by HPE. It’s becoming clear that HPE will have no play in the public cloud marketplace but when it comes to on-prem, enjoying the cloud experience, HPE is making a big pitch to the global enterprise marketplace.

With HPE Discover 2021 only a couple of months away, we are expecting to hear a lot more about where HPE is taking this rebranding of many previous products (together with some new capabilities as well as offerings from ISVs), and where they are finding success in the marketplace. So, stay tuned for more about this in the coming months,

The big news from HPE came just a few days ago with its announcement of its financial results for Q1, 2021. In the March 2 Press Release that accompanied the announcement, the news looked good:

“We delivered a strong Q1 performance,” said Antonio Neri, president and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “Our revenue exceeded our outlook and we significantly expanded our gross and operating margins to drive strong profitability across most of our businesses. Our non-GAAP EPS exceeded the high-end of our guidance and free cash flow was a record Q1 performance. These results give us confidence to raise our FY21 outlook.”

To read more about this late breaking story together with more news for the HPC / MCS business, look for my latest update in our regular column, HPE Corner, that appears in this issue of NonStop Insider.

Social Media Round Up:

News of Striim completing their $50m Series C round of funding certainly attracted considerably social media coverage. The fact that this round of fund raising was led by Goldman Sachs even as it attracted other investors including Summit Partners, Atlantic Bridge Ventures, Dell Ventures, and Bosch Ventures makes it even more newsworthy. For the NonStop community, with deep roots in all things NonStop even as they provided support for NonStop from day one, any time we read of NonStop vendors succeeding in the larger marketplace makes for exciting reading.

COVID-19 and the global pandemic and with it, the global pursuit of population vaccination, continues to grab much of the spotlight on social media and HPE is providing almost continuous updates on the contributions they are making. Unfortunately, sharing the social media spotlight are the many stories of just how much of our personal information can be bought even as ransomware remains mostly unchecked. As with every invention of the past couple of millennia, there are as many downsides as there are upsides suggesting that the businesses need to pay attention to security, compliance and an ability to push back and that will attract even more attention in the future.

User Events:

Looking forward to attending our first in-person event late June! ATMIA will be holding its US Conference 2021, June 23 – 25, 2021 at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, Las Vegas. Margo and I have been attending this event for financial institutions for many years and are looking forward to once again, participating in face-to-face discussions with many familiar faces. If this isn’t on your calendar be aware than many of the participants are from the NonStop community, users and vendors alike.

Coincidentally, this will be the same week as the HPE Discover 2021 “Virtual Experience” that will be held for a couple of days, we will be pulling double duty as we call into and listen to the HPE Executive presentations. Whatever transpires and no matter the format there is a growing sense that the event industry is beginning to look ahead at more prosperous times and like many of you we have talked to, we are hopeful some of the big RUG gatherings return to in-person events later in the year.

For more news on NonStop RUG events, see separate column, HPE NonStop RUGs included in this April issue.

And now for the posts and articles published during January 2021

Real Time View blog:

March 10, 2021
Hang on – someone’s on the line!
https://itug-connection.blogspot.com/2021/03/hang-on-someones-on-line.html

March 19, 2021
Hey, you, get off of my cloud!
https://itug-connection.blogspot.com/2021/03/hey-you-get-off-of-my-cloud.html

March 26, 2021
For the NonStop community, news is good; I will take that!
https://itug-connection.blogspot.com/2021/03/for-nonstop-community-news-is-good-i.html

Buckle-Up:

March 15, 2021
Winter came to Northern Colorado
https://buckle-up-travel.blogspot.com/2021/03/winter-came-to-northern-colorado.html

March 23, 2021
Third post to NASA Speed News; that rush of excitement!
https://buckle-up-travel.blogspot.com/2021/03/third-post-to-nasa-speed-news-that-rush.html

Richard Buckle
Cofounder and CEO
Pyalla Technologies, LLC