Pyalla Technologies … NonStop: Competitive once again!

I opened the article published in last month’s issue of NonStop Insider with references to the changes taking place inside our garage. I noted the passing of really big engines and I took this as an opportunity to revisit the introduction to the market of the Tandem Cyclone. It was back in the late 1980s and even a check of Wiki will remind us that it was indeed, “1989 (when) Tandem introduced the NonStop Cyclone, a fast but expensive system for the mainframe end of the market.” So I wrote of how times changed and increasingly, it’s becoming harder and harder to know exactly which box or rack houses NonStop!

This month, changes came thick and fast on the garage front as Pyalla Technologies worked on rationalization and arguably, simplification. Gone from Pyalla is the company command center that we relied upon for a decade as our home away from home during major HPE and industry events. It was also home away from home whenever we promoted the company among Tandem and HPE engineers sharing similar passions. The marketing of Pyalla Technologies throughout this time took many forms and this was perhaps the one that gave us the greatest visibility.

As for the Corvette Z06 track car that too has been sold along with our car hauler that had transported the car every time we headed to a track. If you aren’t familiar with road racing across the western states of America they are almost exclusively held on tracks in dessert regions so having the company command center on hand meant not only decent accommodations for ourselves but an opportunity to entertain other like-minded souls who would relinquish their weekend responsibilities to sit under a scorching sun just to enjoy a handful of twenty minute sessions on track!

Competition is always good and being in a competitive position is very much what everyone in the NonStop community strives to achieve. Talk to any NonStop vendor participating in a Regional User Group (RUG) meeting and you can just see the competitive spirit on full display. Having said this there is a camaraderie shared among all these vendors as everyone recognizes that there is a shared understanding that there is more happening in the marketplace than simply taking business away from each other. Absolutely – should NonStop cease to be a competitive solution then what would be the necessity of RUG events taking place at all?

It was scarcely half a decade ago when the NonStop community first gained a sense that NonStop was returning to competitiveness and doing so rather aggressively. The first piece of good news for many NonStop users was that HPE didn’t consider NonStop non-core and, as a result, it’s position within the Mission Critical Systems portfolio was reinforced. There is a market for fault tolerant computers and that future called for a new breed of NonStop – one that would shed the need for proprietary hardware before ultimately shedding the need for hardware at all! Within certain constraints, of course, as the Intel x86 architecture very much predicated success in this regard as did access to multiple Ethernet fabrics when considering the option of running NonStop purely as software atop a collection of virtual machines.

However, the real story here touches on a more fundamental issue – the NonStop community is truly energized once again and the willingness of NonStop vendors to invest in new products for NonStop users became evident very quickly. Just as importantly, these NonStop vendors not only began hiring additional staff but many of them began grooming a second generation of NonStop managers to take the helm of their organization, as circumstances dictated. The emergence of the “Under 40” SIG, or the NSU40 SIG as it’s become known, not only has become a popular SIG at all recent RUG events – from Leipzig to Edinburgh to Burlingame, California, it has become one of the more vocal if not the most energized SIG and the organizers behind it really do deserve our thanks for all the work they have done to ensure this SIG becomes popular.

It is very important to note this changing of the guard. I have always been very competitive and many times, to my detriment. Too focused on just one particular scrimmage I sometimes miss what’s taking place on the rest of the playing field. At one point I was so sure I would become a professional Rugby League player that I passed on nearly all social outings and when I returned home with a contract to join a League’s team juniors well, that didn’t end well. Point is, whenever you look more closely at the attendees present at any venue where NonStop is the focal point, today you see more energy than most of us have seen in a very long time together with an understanding that NonStop today is playing the “long game.” And by that, I mean that following sizeable investments in NonStop by HPE, NonStop will be with us for many more years.

In a matter of days, what many NonStop vendors consider the premier event of the year, the NonStop Partner Symposium, will have ended with participants heading back to their offices. Armed with new information about NonStop that will, in all likelihood, find its way into the agenda for the upcoming NonStop Technical Boot Camp (TBC) scheduled for November – you are planning on attending, right? – NonStop vendors will be hard at work fine-tuning their presentation material. Within the realm of what’s afforded them by the HPE NonStop team as this event is under CDAs, but fingers crossed that by the time of TBC, more information can be shared with all members of the NonStop community.

In the previous issue I wrapped up the feature with references to NonStop returning to growth and of who wouldn’t be impressed with what HPE and the NonStop team have achieved in such a short time. This time I would like to leave you with the thought that we are truly watching the second generation begin to take charge and just as importantly, already they are proving to be every bit as competitive as me and my peers were two or more decades ago. 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 not forgetting too that you can follow me on twitter @RichardKBuckle and connect with me on LinkedIn as Richard Buckle. And yes, one last favor? Keep liking and following me on LinkedIn and twitter as I really do appreciate all the support the NonStop community has been providing Pyalla Technologies through the years.

Richard Buckle
Cofounder and CEO
Pyalla Technologies, LLC