Pyalla Technologies … NonStop: community looks to HPE Discover for updates on future of NonStop!

I have always considered it an honor to be recognized by HPE as part of its HPE Influencer program and once again, I was invited to be HPE’s guest at the latest HPE Discover 2019 big-tent marketing event. While Margo didn’t join me for every presentation she was recognized by the organizers as indeed the influencer, strongly influencing this influencer and as such was invited to all the networking opportunities HPE arranged for the group. While I am pretty stoked to have 3,000 views of my blogs each month with more than 2,000 followers in LinkedIn together with a small but growing number of followers on twitter – have you followed me yet on either social media channel? – one invited HPE Influencer has over 750,000 followers. True, he is in the Microsoft marketplace but even so, I am in awe of these kind of numbers!

HPE Discover was very revealing this year as it got down to business relatively quickly. You will read more about the specifics in other articles published in this issue of NonStop Insider – make sure you read this issue’s HPE NonStop – one partner’s perspective article. However, what I have to comment about is the way HPE put its people front-and-center in everything that it is pursuing. “We advance the way people live and work” wasn’t just a weak platitude or some new way to come up with a big banner, but rather, from the very first presentation by HPE CEO Antonio Neri, it was all about the people; those working for HPE directly, those working as channel partners, those who make up ecosystems, including the HPE Influencers, as well as every user of HPE products, solutions and services.

Evolving the culture of HPE to where it places itself in the center of all customer interactions is important to Neri as it should be to leaders of every company. If you happen to be a HPE Vice President without P&L responsibilities or some form of customer facing role then you might be a little nervous right now as part of the HPE Next initiative that commenced prior to Neri’s ascension to the top job (but developed with his input while former HPE CEO Meg Whitman was still at the helm), was to streamline the organization. Make it easier for customers to interact with HPE even as it made it easier for HPE employees to get things done inside HPE.  I have to wonder whether we would be seeing some of the NonStop initiatives we now read about – NonStop running on HPE Synergy? NonStop running on Edgeline EL4000s? NonStop anchoring HPE IT and supporting NSaaS / DBaaS?

When you walked onto the floor of the exhibition hall at HPE Discover 2019 – you didn’t see banners flying over the hall promoting all things NonStop. HPE doesn’t really do that for any product, but this year, it was made a little easier as just down the aisle under the banner, Accelerating Next, you could find a stand with the banner Mission Critical Systems. Just across the way from HPE Labs, it was easier to find than in the past and its almost central location meant that it attracted a lot of foot traffic. Out NonStop product managers, Mark Pollans and Roland Lemoine, always had someone to talk to whenever I looked their way. And nearby you had Keith Moore demonstrating NonStop running atop VMware on EL4000! Not yet a product, mind you, as Keith reminded me but something that could be easily productized and not just on the EL4000 as the EL8000 is in Keith’s sights as well. And not just with VMware but with the Debian hypervisor and perhaps even KVM.

Neri made it very clear that as part of HPE Next not only was the organization being simplified but the product lines as well. Looking ahead, there will be just three platforms – ProLiant, Synergy and Apollo. If you were wondering about Apollo it’s the specialized products that underpins the High Performance Computing group that includes the former SGI team and shortly will include Cray. I am suspecting that this too is where The Machine has the biggest impact – somewhere between ProLiant and Apollo you will begin to see the early roll-out of photonics and optical communication links – the next big step when it comes to producing giant memory-driven computing system. SDKs are available for early adopters looking to exploit the properties of The Machine, but its influence will gradually work its way into mulitiple product lines, as clearly, Moore’s Law has come to an end.

It was an exciting time at this year’s HPE Discover 2019 event. If you have as yet not read the latest post to the NonStop community blog, Real Time View, then you may want to check out this link to the story – All that was revealed at HPE Discover 2019 If you have any difficulties accessing this hyperlink, you can cut and paste the following into your browser – https://itug-connection.blogspot.com/2019/06/all-that-was-revealed-at-hpe-discover.html This year, I turned to twitter to keep everyone up-to-date on all that was being covered at HPE Discover and again, if you aren’t following me as yet, just look for @RichardKBuckle And with that I will wrap up this month’s update on Pyalla Technologies, LLC, but would welcome your emails at Richard@pyalla-technologies.com

Richard Buckle
Cofounder and CEO
Pyalla Technologies, LLC