Social Media Round-Up, October

In some respects it has been a quiet period for the past couple of weeks but the regional user groups were hosting numerous events around the world. And there are still a few more events on the calendar before everyone heads to the NonStop Technical Boot Camp (TBC) in November. What an event that will most likely be as the NonStop community is looking for updates on virtualized NonStop (vNS), continued development of NonStop SQL/MX and even a demo of the blockchain. It will also be the first major event post spin-merge of HPE non-core software to Micro Focus and as security products previously available directly from HPE were caught up in the spin-merge, I am sure there will be considerable attention given to just how the HPE NonStop team addresses the situation.

A quick look around blogs and discussion groups highlights just how quiet it has been and I suspect that being the height of summer vacation time hasn’t helped either. However, a quick check of google group, comp.sys.tandem highlights that this continues to be one of the better places to turn to for everyday questions that are mostly operational / programming in nature. If you haven’t been made aware of this site, then it’s well worth visiting. And of course, ITUGLIB remains a great source for open source material that can run on NonStop and in this month’s issue of NonStop Insider, check out the update provided by Nexbridge’s Randall Becker.

But the big question remains – how many of us check web sites and professional groups for news on NonStop? How many of us check out the pages on our favorite vendor’s web site? And how prepared are we for the occasional pop-up chatbot? Particularly when it comes to information acquisition? Personally, I am on the fence with this one, although I have to admit, one did help me select my next set of tires for my car – but products and features? Gartner held their big Symposium / ITxpo 2017 just a week ago and, coinciding with the event, wrote about some of their predictions for the coming years.

What grabbed my attention was the reference to chatbots where Gartner predicts that, by “2021, more than 50% of enterprises will be spending more per annum on bots and chatbot creation than traditional mobile app development.” Furthermore, according to Gartner, “The availability of multiple open-source bot frameworks will lead to a proliferation of readily available chatbots that can be used in the business.” In other words, our whole approach to checking social media may be a whole lot different to what it is today. Then again, in time, it will be next to impossible to know if you are really reading the work of an analyst / commentator or simply consuming a series of soundbites strung together via advanced AI! And you will be directed to these articles / posts by a very smart chatbot that, with advancements in Natural Language Processing (NLP), turn out to be “much better at recognizing the user intent than previous generations.” Ouch … some of us may find ourselves back out on the street!

One source of information however will continue to be with us for some time – the venerable web site. I don’t know of any vendor in the NonStop community that does’t have a web site – even Pyalla Technologies, LLC has a web site, although in all honesty, it takes a back seat to the work I do for clients. However, this month I have been on a number of vendor web sites and I have to admit, three of them really stood out. If you haven’t checked any of these of late, you may want to take a look and just see how easy it is to navigate each site and how quickly you become better informed about the company and its products. The three that topped my list include:

Striim – http://www.striim.com/

Paragon – https://paragonedge.com/

Insider Technology – https://www.insidertech.co.uk/

This last reference, to Insider Technology, was perhaps the biggest surprise as it has been a while since I recall checking them out, but should you visit any of the above, tell me about your experience as I hope other vendors take a look and learn a little more about what makes a web site really work for those who land on their pages. As always, if a web site has blog pages that are being regularly updated then yes, I’m hooked!

Finally, showing that a traditional publication can excel in something more appealing to those of us who prefer to read blog posts than lengthy exposes, Fortune Magazine has come up with separate web pages under the heading of The Ledger. This is where you can read insightful papers on industries, mostly IT, where of late it’s been all about blockchain and cryptocurrency. Interesting stuff and if you have access to Fortune’s web pages, well worth taking time off to peruse.

Cheers,

Richard