Striim: In a connected world, NonStop systems provide the freshest data!

“Don’t go outside; it’s raining!” And so began a conversation with a NonStop analyst and commentator. The inference being that yes, you could get wet or worse, be struck by lightning. Perhaps it might also be a case of watching for mudslides and washouts. When assessing risks, perhaps it simply isn’t worth venturing beyond the front door, but then again, there are stores to be visited, pharmacies and perhaps the bank. When it comes to risk-reward factors, there is a constant evaluation of possible outcomes even when the requirements are obvious.

“‘No risk, no reward,’ may be true, but unnecessary risk is . . . well, unnecessary,” Forrester posted to its blog in November, 2020. “The most advanced customer-obsessed firms use chains of technology innovation to deliver exceptional customer experience and operational excellence. However, most firms struggle to reach this point due to outdated technologies and methods of working … selecting the right technology vendor can feel like going out on a limb, alone.” On the other hand, ask the farmers in California’s valley and the consensus is that rain is a good thing!

For the NonStop community a culture has developed of making sure NonStop systems are kept in isolation. Through the decades it’s been common practice to ensure nothing in the data center has the potential of degrading the NonStop systems ability to run 24 x 7. The chance of compromising the fault tolerance of NonStop was simply too big a risk to take. However, supporting mission critical applications as they do, NonStop creates fresh data and today, that data is proving critical to AI and ML models. NonStop systems need to step outside of their comfort zone to better serve the needs of the enterprise. To IT professionals, data is a good thing!

Through the decades there have been many choices when it came to networking and NonStop has enjoyed considerable success playing the role of an intelligent front end. However, in today’s world, a data pipe isn’t sufficient for the needs; a data platform is the preferred solution. Finding the right vendor to entrust with moving your data continuously and with minimal intrusion into the operational environment of NonStop is critical and with the Striim streaming data integration platform, there is now a reliable NonStop partner to entrust with such a critical aspect of data integration.

In a post last year to the Striim blog, What is Stream Data Integration, reference is made to the Gartner report, Adopt Stream Data Integration to Meet Your Real-Time Data Integration and Analytics Requirements, 15 March 2019, Ehtisham Zaidi, W. Roy Schulte, Eric Thoo. “SDI (stream data integration) implements a data pipeline to ingest, filter, transform, enrich and then store the data in a target database or file to be analyzed later.”  Further, “For SDI systems, the input event streams are a continuous, unbounded sequence of event records rather than a static snapshot of data at rest in a file or database. The streams are data ‘in motion.’” Gartner correctly identifies that streaming is about much more than just transfer as it’s all about filtering, enriching and yes, oftentimes, transforming; analytics can only provide the best outcomes when the breadth of data spans as much of what’s happening right now as it can!

When you consider today the ecosystem of platforms, systems, applications and databases that Striim can tap into – as highlighted above – and consider too the success Striim has enjoyed working with major NonStop customers, the risks to compromising the NonStop applications or endangering the integrity of the data being captured within the NonStop databases, there is little risk in embracing the Striim streaming data integration platform. In an age where many consider data to be more valuable than oil or gold and access to fresh data perhaps the most valuable IT resource of all, it’s important to know that there is a NonStop partner that is solely focused on ensuring data gets to where it needs to go; with Striim, data is provided from here to where you need it most!

Venturing out into the rain may be problematic but then again, there are regions around the world where rain fell for the first time in a decade. Children born in that time period simply didn’t know what rain was as they stepped outside to frolic in the puddles that formed. It was refreshing to see such joyous excitement. On the other hand, at this time of year there are many among us who are just as excited to see snow falling in the mountains at this time of year!

When it comes to data and NonStop perhaps it’s a bit of a stretch to imagine hardened IT professionals either frolicking or jumping with joy over data that can be directed to where it is most needed and yet, after all the decades where isolation was encouraged, there will be many NonStop customers who understand that this is something new. Striim delivers on its promise of supporting NonStop and for that, the NonStop community might just consider stepping outside to enjoy data as it rains down on those applications most in need of fresh data!

Should you have any questions for Striim as a result of reading this article then please don’t hesitate to reach out to us, the Striim team. We would be only too happy to hear from you, anytime and all the time.

Ferhat Hatay, Ph.D.
Sr. Director of Partnerships and Alliances, Striim, Inc.