Pyalla Technologies…changes, clarity and consumption. Are you ready for the new NonStop?

“Good things come in pairs,” or so we have been led to believe. Or, more commonly stated, “It takes two to tango, two to kiss, two to talk and reminisce.” Over the years, Margo and I have had a pair of this and that – first it was his and her Corvettes and more recently, a pair of BMWs. Then again, we have enjoyed working in IT, given that as a couple we have worked together for the same company more than once. Ever wonder why it is that sports cars have two seats, mostly? Point is, much of what is behind having two of anything is in order to provide choice – do you want the red one or the blue one? Do you need the electric stovetop or the gas stovetop? Can you make do with the smartphone or would you like the tablet as well?

For more than four decades, NonStop has always been about well, NonStop. You bought a NonStop system and loaded it with the integrated software stack that NonStop development supports and this includes the operating system. There were choices you could make – did you want Pathway or did your solution come with an equivalent of Pathway built in? Did you need NonStop SQL or is Enscribe satisfactory? Even with vendor offerings, as a community we were given the choice of ESQ or IR not to mention DRNet®or Shadowbase (for this comparison, I am ignoring GoldenGate, as it’s moving away from NonStop). And then there is the more contentious issue as to whether you run Windows or Mac! iPhone or anything else? But no longer, when it comes to NonStop, as there are now two distinct paths you can go down – traditional or virtual.

We may argue over the merits of one versus the other but there is no question whatsoever about them both being NonStop. As one HPE senior manager reminded me only this past week, “We wouldn’t have called it NonStop anything when we added support for virtual machines if it wasn’t truly NonStop!” Two paths to go down and two communities to serve! Traditional NonStop users can rest easy in that there is a path forward where they can continue to deploy NonStop X converged systems. We have all seen the presentations by now and we have all had opportunities to talk to our NonStop sales teams about the implications, but for many, it still comes as news that they can fire-up a NonStop system atop OpenStack / KVM and yes, VMware / vSphere. This latest addition to what NonStop supports is the real deal as there probably isn’t an enterprise around that hasn’t deployed VMware somewhere in their network. After all, VMware / vSphere has become the world’s leading virtualization software and it even helps out when it is time to build a cloud.

Apart from these two paths an enterprise can go down, there is also two ways to get your hands on NonStop. Of course, buy a new NonStop X and you get the integrated stack and pay for it as you always have done, but increasingly, attention has been directed to paying only what you need from NonStop, when you need it. Consumption pricing! The details are still a bit sketchy and here at Pyalla Technologies we are far from convinced that all the pieces are in place in order to commit to this path, but hopefully, with the NonStop Partner Symposium about to happen, we will hear a lot more from NonStop development about exactly what they propose to do in support of consumption pricing. However, we did hear at GTUG only a month or so ago about plans for portals and apps and functionality arriving in a container to be stripped and installed in a virtual machine. Wow – are we still talking about NonStop?

This leads to observations about one more pairing and that is vendors and users. Whereas users will derive benefits from being able to consume NonStop any way they want, for the vendors the path takes them to a different place. Possibly a mix of traditional licensing with some consumption elements but more often than not, the NonStop vendor community will hold tight reins over the code that makes it into their applications. The big unknown when you consider mixing the licensing models will always be “support” but then again, we are sure that HPE has something in the works – perhaps involving PointNext – to address the complexities that will likely arise. But even here, we cannot overlook just how creative and adventurous the new NonStop has become. Two product lines – traditional and virtual – two licensing models – traditional and consumption based and yes, two different types of companies involved with NonStop – enterprise users and the vendors that support them.

Every time HPE VP & GM, Randy Meyer, takes the stage anywhere in the world we hear about new use-case scenarios. Whether it is baggage handling in one location or a bakery in another location or even Airservices Australia that uses NonStop to provide air navigation services, and more, Randy is quick to tell us of yet one more interesting deployment of NonStop he has discovered during his travels. As virtualized NonStop develops traction with the marketplace and services like NonStop SQL as a Service and even just NonStop as a Service prove attractive, there really shouldn’t be any members of the NonStop community surprised by what new NonStop user we next hear about! And that may be the best instance of good things coming in pairs – NonStop and Mission Critical solutions. Many solutions, if not all of them, running on NonStop! Who could have guessed this eventuality just a few years ago certainly, not Pyalla Technologies and with that, it’s time to start prepping for Palo Alto and the Partner Symposium.

Richard Buckle
Cofounder and CEO
Pyalla Technologies, LLC