Pyalla Technologies … NonStop’s success has been due to standing firm!

This month it has been all about awards as Academy Award season has just wrapped up for another year. If the theme last month was the cold and the return of the Polar Vortex, this month has certainly seen the heat turned right up as popular figures battled each other for those gold Oscars. The theater may be strongly interwoven into society and a culture has developed around a number of different genres, the show packaged for television attracts a global audience. What are they wearing? Who will be entertaining the audience? Who will win and who will lose and who will disappoint even as we look to who will connect with us emotionally in a positive manner?

For 2019, this major television event was full of drama – unexpected wins, high-profile directors attempting to storm away from the show, disappointments intermixed with high anxiety and outright relief. It all sounds like an ITUG event of former times as vendors jostled for the best booth location in the exhibition hall as other vendors lobbied hard for the presentation to make the cut. All the while, the primary vendor through the years – Tandem Computers, Compaq, HP and most recently, HPE – has pushed hard for its time in the spotlight. From keynote sessions by Jimmy Treybig to Tom Perkins to Michael Capellas to Martin Fink – there has been a steady flow of industry heavy weights adding just a touch of drama in their own right to this major NonStop community event. Capellas arrived with his own bodyguard just to add some spice to the occasion.

Last month I wrote about the images created with references to a vortex – when it comes to technology there are many times when similar emotions are stirred. Despite the emotional stirrings that arise at the thought of a vortex and indeed, at the thought of the movie we liked best failing to register with the Academy, for the NonStop community the good news is that as a product line, NonStop has stood firm and has, through the decades, avoided all attempts to count it out, relegated to just a footnote in history or worse, branded with the dreaded Legacy label. If you are looking for drama and as a community, want to experience similar emotions that were clearly on display at the Academy awards event, NonStop will disappoint. Not for want of trying to better capture the attention of the media, NonStop continues to deliver on its original design goal, availability, and it’s a testament to all those mentioned above that no leader took their eyes off this goal and as the world gravitates to a “compute model” made up of the core and the edge, they still expect it all to work 24 x 7 and it’s as if the former “Indy Movie,” NonStop, is reappearing in mainstream theaters everywhere!

Controversy has never been a part of the NonStop culture – perhaps when there was internal debate over the merits of further R&D in support of SNA, versus OSI versus TCP/IP it may have appeared to the community that budget turf was being fought over with no holds barred – this was a healthy aspect of growth and accommodating a rapidly changing landscape. As controversial as it was at the time, NonStop development turned to partners;  the middleware or access methods or even hardware, partnerships formed that helped bring forward the delivery dates. Controversial doesn’t always come with competition nor should teamwork be thought of as lessening of the commitment to pursue (a project or a role). And partnerships have always played an important role within NonStop and the NonStop community has benefited whenever partnerships have been embraced. Indeed, partnerships are deeply rooted in the culture of the NonStop community.

In the January 27, 2019, post Of culture, and what we take for granted! to the NonStop community blog, Real Time View, culture made a major contribution to the story line. If you have any problems with the hyperlink above, then just cut and paste this link into you browser – https://itug-connection.blogspot.com/2019/02/of-culture-and-what-we-take-for-granted.html

Changing the culture of the NonStop community and having it embrace NonStop as software may prove more challenging than simply introducing NonStop to new users, new industries and new markets all supporting new applications. Culture and yes, cultural differences exist within the NonStop community and it’s really just a question of mindset – a situation that is heavily influenced by what others might say.

Mindsets can evolve and along with changing mindsets, the underlying culture can change too. This is no longer the NonStop of Tandem Computers but rather the NonStop of Hybrid IT – the transformation of NonStop in lock-step with the transformation of IT itself. 

Indeed, it is a good time to remind us all that as a community, NonStop also has a deep heritage rooted in trying something that originates from the partner community even if the vendor is small or even when it is competing with a product from the NonStop team. Again, this is not in conflict with the culture of the community nor is it detracting from the true value partners provide. Of late, the NonStop team has gone to extraordinary lengths to broaden what is in the NonStop price book just to better accommodate those NonStop users who for reasons of their own company policy or as a byproduct of experiences with other vendors, will only purchase middleware, infrastructure and tools from NonStop sales. This is a vastly different situation to what other vendors talk about when it comes to partnerships as very few computer vendors today so openly embrace the work of their partners.

Hollywood is all about partnerships. Whether it is the producers looking for product, directors looking for scripts or actors looking for parts, there is an ecosystem that develops around the telling of any story on film. When it comes to the big occasion that the Academy Awards represents, controversy usually follows competition – my film was better than yours! Fortunately, while the NonStop vendor community remains competitive and it is oftentimes when the slideware used can run up to the lines but no further, there is very little controversy. The results of the NonStop show are always a winning formula for the NonStop community. There is a vastly different NonStop today than there was just a decade ago and the options available to the NonStop community are greater than at any other time in the history of NonStop. And for this, owe much of the choice on offer today to the partnerships that have developed across the NonStop community and with that, we have much to be thankful. No wardrobe malfunctions with NonStop; nothing to see here so move along – what a culture!

Richard Buckle
Cofounder and CEO
Pyalla Technologies, LLC