The emergence of multiple software ecosystems

In the September – October 2022 issue of the Connect Worldwide publication, The Connection, an opportunity was given to me to write about the emergence of software ecosystems. In the article, The emergence of multiple software ecosystems, subtitled, A story of changing priorities; changing relationships; changing leverage points, I turned this opportunity into an examination of the many ecosystems present within the NonStop community. The HPE NonStop has built an ecosystem of vendors whose products are on the NonStop price book. Perhaps more widely known is the Connect Community ecosystem of partners that embraces all NonStop vendors. Through Connect even the smallest vendor has an open channel to everyone in the NonStop community.

Individual NonStop vendors have also turned to building ecosystems as they engage with likeminded vendors. In former times the Insession business unit within ACI Worldwide set the benchmark in this regard, but today perhaps it’s worth taking a closer look at what NTI has managed to achieve in a relatively short timeframe. What is different though is where Insession set about exclusively reselling partner products today’s ecosystems as demonstrated by NTI are more of a combination of pure cooperation, reference and reselling efforts, where considerable market intelligence is being shared.

What drives an ecosystem is a desire to present customers with a coherent solution while containing costs, to enjoy a greater market presence and to tap into skillsets that otherwise would take much longer to develop. In a recent presentation by VMware’s CTO Kit Colbert, he made reference to software supply chain consistency. His reference was how enterprise users had to come to decisions about how best to handle multi-cloud services. However, within the NonStop community whether multi-cloud services are being used or not, customers understand the need for robust software supply chains with a desire to have strong working relationships with a select group of vendors all of whom know each other, support each other and can be helpful in navigating through more complex issues like security, data integration and visualization. This is perhaps a key driver to NonStop vendors working hard to create ecosystems that better support the NonStop user.

If you take another look at the article in The Connection you will come across these observations:

For major NonStop vendors to pursue the creation of an ecosystem is not only admirable but comes with a secondary benefit in that at least someone else out there albeit a vendor, has “skin in the game” when it comes to stepping outside of the product portfolio already relied upon by the NonStop customer. After all, there will always be the opportunity to return to your main vendor should things not go to plan with the plea, can you help us out? Can you talk to your associates? In business, having multiple paths to any member of your own mix of vendors is always a great advantage.

What has changed that has given rise to the current spate of news releases? The NonStop team has been putting together its own ecosystem of partners that arguably plug many of the holes that the NonStop team had identified.

However, in so developing their own ecosystem they have elevated the stakes such that individually, NonStop vendors that are not a part of the NonStop ecosystem are now creating new allegiances to better ensure the products remain front and center in the minds of NonStop customers.

Relationships have strengthened among NonStop vendors who for many reasons, mostly historic, have known each other for a long time and who have operated within their respective orbits. Again and not surprisingly, what Connect continues to do is to support Chapter and RUG events worldwide that in turn has ensured close contact among the vendor community. Recognizing that the relationships that they enjoyed probably had more to offer than table conversations at an event sponsored beer bust, taking the next step and formalizing a relationship became an almost no-brainer activity.

I had a lot of fun writing this article although some of it was definitely tongue in cheek. However it does tackle the very real problem of how best each NonStop vendor can go about ensuring that the NonStop customer is aware of their products. The HPE NonStop ecosystem as depicted in the NonStop price book comes with the added value of being the sole presentation bullet points you will hear from your NonStop sales teams. Naturally enough, those NonStop vendors not so represented need to turn to alternate channels. Publications, social media all help but ultimately it is with Connect and the events that Connect organizes where the complete portfolio of software available today for NonStop can be seen. Talk about a software supply chain that is consistent well, there it is. Right in front of you; check it out at the NonStop TBC 22

Again, if you missed reading my article in The Connection all you now need to do is follow this link –

Richard Buckle
Cofounder and CEO
Pyalla Technologies, LLC.