Striim and clouds; helping NonStop applications break free from being siloed, yet again!

There hasn’t been a major HPE event of late where the focus hasn’t been on simplifying the transformation to Hybrid IT. However, amongst all the coverage HPE is giving to Hybrid IT, there hasn’t been a whole lot of coverage of the potential downside from over-ambitious approaches some enterprises have been taking. Simply stated, application “silos” can easily be replicated in the cloud with no lessening of the isolation that these silos represent.

For the most part, HPE has been focusing on the combination of traditional IT and private cloud IT whenever it talks about Hybrid IT, but the rest of the industry expands on this to cover multiple cloud deployments including mixes of private and public clouds. This will likely take center stage within HPE at some point, but that doesn’t change the situation at all – if you simply pick up an application siloed already and drop it into a cloud, private or public, it’s still going to be siloed unless additional steps are taken.

Perhaps the biggest challenge with any project to move to a cloud is realizing the projected cost savings. Experience among some members of the NonStop vendor community has given rise to the notion that without changes to the way data is accessed together with a requirement for data to be online all the time, the perceived cost savings diminish very quickly – simply replicating all the data center resources required of the application being moved to the cloud and having them available all the time is a recipe for sticker shock when the first bill arrives. On the other hand, where storage hierarchies are involved and the amount of data being accessed online is kept to a manageable level then serious cost savings can be realized pretty quickly.

As one NonStop vendor stated recently at a RUG event, “The cloud neither provides the reliability of an on-premise deployment nor does it come with guarantees about uptime. When it comes to meeting strict SLAs which so often are in force today between IT and business units then yes, forget about it! Not going to happen. Finally, looking to save money then you might be surprised to hear that clouds don’t save money – they are more expensive!” But again, replicating exactly what you have on-premise in a cloud and maintaining a siloed approach isn’t what clouds are addressing.

Cost savings can be realized as can be a heightened level of agility. When it comes to the larger value proposition of clouds, particularly public clouds, it comes down to the accessibility to a wealth of new software being developed in the clouds and supported by the cloud vendors. Take Amazon Web Services, for instance, that aggressively promotes its value proposition to enterprises based on agility. “Enterprises today are also building business apps in the cloud, in order to increase revenue. Whatever it is, the requirements are the same: Availability, agility and flexibility are key.” says AWS in promotional material. “Time to market is critical in today’s competitive environment. Building new, revenue generating software and cloud apps that will increase the business’s revenue is a must. Amazon Web Services can help take you into the future of your business with a breadth of services designed to help you build the software and applications needed to remain ahead of the curve.”

Whether you are onboard with this messaging or not, this is the story being told to enterprises today. For the NonStop community there are serious concerns over just how much attention needs to be given to clouds and yet, CIOs are being bombarded with examples of how agility, flexibility  and costs savings are readily achievable even if the skeptics among us question the claims about availability. When it comes to better integrating the application silos that have been created, consideration has to be given to what products and services are available to help break down the walls.

At Striim, we understand that clouds can bring agility and cost savings but working in hybrid cloud environments without addressing the underlying application architecture leads to the creation of new data siloes for IT teams to overcome. “Striim enables fully-connected hybrid cloud environments via continuous real-time data feed and processing between on-premise data sources and cloud environments,” said the Striim team on their web site. “With Striim you store only the data you need in the format you need, and gain immediate insights from high-velocity data via built-in stream analytics.”

To read more of what Striim can provide when it comes to breaking down the siloes that will likely be created in clouds when left unaddressed check out the web page covering Hybrid Cloud Integration –
https://www.striim.com/solutions/hybrid-cloud-integration-analytics/

Make sure you scroll down to the use-case that describes the Striim implementation at a European courier Express-Parcel company. However, they key to breaking down the siloes of the past lies with better integration with the rest of the enterprise and the unique streaming data integration capabilities of Striim have become a proven solution for doing exactly this kind of integration.

The challenges facing the NonStop community are real. There will be a brighter spotlight directed at applications running on NonStop as CIOs begin evaluating and prioritizing what is taken to the clouds, whether private or public. Clearly, the HPE NonStop team has done a good job in ensuring NonStop runs virtualized giving it the ability to be easily moved to clouds but if nothing further is done to better integrate the data, NonStop will be as siloed as it has been in the past. Talk to the Striim team to find out more about how they can help dismantle these siloes and yes, look for us at this year’s NonStop Technical Boot Camp. We will be there and we will be only too happy to cover more of what Striim can do today.

And make sure you check out too What’s New in Striim v. 3.8.6 when you visit the Striim web site with even more information about the integration capabilities of Striim particularly when it comes to integration with public clouds!

Sami Akbay | EVP and Founder
d 650.241.0680 x123 | sakbay@striim.com
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