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

How well do we think NonStop “plays well with others?” It’s a topic that is often the subject of discussions at NonStop events, chapter meetings and within tech forums where the NonStop community gathers. If we are serious about the future role of NonStop then not only do we need to continue articulating the benefits that come with fault tolerance but also just how modern NonStop has become and juts how easy it is to plug it into today’s infrastructure.

There was a time when such considerations followed a typical hierarchical approach. Was the NonStop system an intelligent front end accessible by upstream processors? Was the NonStop system a database appliance accessible by downstream servers? At the time Citibank took delivery of the very first NonStop (nee Tandem) system back in May 1976, this bank was known to purchase one of practically every system available. Then again, this banks purchase of the NonStop systems did attract the attention of the financial services industry.

For banks and retailers the bulk of their applications used to ran on IBM mainframes that, at best, were subject to routine “planned outages.” When NonStop arrived it was an opportunity to front end the mainframe with a system that could keep on processing during these outages and in a manner of speaking, project an image of the enterprise being online 24 x7. It mattered little to the end user that processed transactions were sometimes being recorded on NonStop for later processing on the mainframe. All that mattered to them was that they completed a purchase or were able to withdrew cash.

That was then and today, all of that has been relegated to just a chapter in the history of IT. Closing in on fifty years later, there is no up or down. There are no hierarchies of technology implementations. Business cannot compete if they cannot support mission critical applications 24 x 7. Enterprises’ priorities center today on data and the speed with which they this data can be analyzed to the benefit of the business and to remain competitive.

All good and well, but then again, we are beginning to witness a degree of unexpected déjà vu. The complexity of todays’ hybrid IT has created a new level of fragility to where the questions being asked sound a lot like those asked fifty years ago. How can we provide reliability and robustness similar to the fault tolerance we enjoyed in the past? To which the response by the NonStop community should be universal – yes, we can.

With that, the conversation comes back to yes, how well can NonStop play with today’s hybrid IT? Can it overlay the entire infrastructure in a manner that projects an image of the enterprise being online 24 x7 as was the case in those former times? It still matters little to the end user how that is achieved so long as they can continue to rely on the service being provided to complete a purchase, move money around and send that all important message. NonStop plugged into the infrastructure to do exactly that is now within reach as the level of middleware available to NonStop users makes playing with other systems very easy to achieve.

We don’t need to turn to a magician’s crystal ball for inspiration. The only obstacle to seeing greater engagement of NonStop systems addressing this scenario comes down the amount of confidence we have in making it happen. The NonStop team has a number of ideas about how to exactly go about doing it – throwing a cloak of availability over your hybrid IT – and all that they now look forward to doing is entering into a conversation with members of the NonStop community who would like to pursue such an objective. If you have participated in any conversations that have broached this topic then by all means, reach out to your NonStop team members.

This has been the topic of many of the posts and commentaries provided over the past two months including posts to the NonStop community blog, Real Time View and to articles published in The Connection. Some of these posts and commentaries follow here and you can catch up with the conversation by simply following the links below:

And now for the most recent posts and articles published during this period

Real Time View blog:

January 26, 2022
Our course is true …
https://itug-connection.blogspot.com/2022/01/our-course-is-true.html

January 14, 2022
Can’t let it go!
https://itug-connection.blogspot.com/2022/01/cant-let-it-go.html

December 18, 2021
What’s not broken and just keeps on running? NonStop delivers!
https://itug-connection.blogspot.com/2021/12/whats-not-broken-and-just-keeps-on.html

All of the above posts address NonStop contributions to availability of hybrid IT including the growing presence of clouds whereas what follows here is perhaps my favorite post of 2021 –

December 7, 2021
Have we stopped worrying? Yes, John, we are serious!
https://itug-connection.blogspot.com/2021/12/have-we-stopped-worrying-yes-john-we.html

Buckle-Up:

January 18, 2022
Canal minded, north to south
https://buckle-up-travel.blogspot.com/2022/01/canal-minded-north-to-south.html

December 30, 2021
The things we read at Christmas …
https://buckle-up-travel.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-things-we-read-at-christmas_30.html

December 11, 2021
And so it happens, another year draws to a close …
https://buckle-up-travel.blogspot.com/2021/12/and-so-it-happens-another-year-draws-to.html

Richard Buckle
Cofounder and CEO
Pyalla Technologies, LLC