User events continue to provide value to the NonStop community; Boot Camp event is the biggest!

October was a month where Pyalla continued with its investment in Regional User Group (RUG) events across North America. Turns out, I’m a little behind the times when it comes to conventions as the Connect organization has been calling RUGs “Chapters” for some time rationalizing the change as being more “industry standard.” And maybe it is, but after so many decades, it’s hard for me to shake references to gatherings of the NonStop community as anything other than a RUG event!

The juxtaposition that came with presenting at both DUST in Phoenix, Arizona, and then just two weeks later at CTUG in Mississauga, Ontario, couldn’t have been more extreme. Dessert in one location with temperatures soaring into the low 90s and an expansive vista with nothing more than cacti whereas the other location, lakeside and on the edge of a very large metropolis, saw temperatures barely climbing into the 70s. But no matter, both events were well attended by NonStop users and vendors with HPE also highly visible and engaged with everyone present.

The value proposition of RUGs (or Chapters) is that they are nurturing events – places to go to meet likeminded souls and where topics focused solely on NonStop take center stage. As such they attract the systems managers and all those involved in the deployment of solutions. These events are popular with the NonStop vendor community, as they have proven effective forums for giving NonStop users updates on the latest products and features. However, these aren’t events where you see the business side of the NonStop user community and there’s little to benefit any enterprise looking at potential acquisition of new NonStop systems.

On the other hand, the annual NonStop Technical Boot Camp that is almost upon us is an occasion to attract greater business participation. Forget the name – the legacy of numerous compromises to keep the event funded and where the turnout from HPE is significant. This is neither a Boot Camp in the traditional sense – no one has ever pulled a board from a NonStop system and asked questions about interfaces and sockets and what can be “enhanced”, nor is it excessively technical, although some of the sessions do dive deep on occasion. Having attracted HPE Vice Presidents, Senior Vice Presidents and even a HPE C-Level exec (the then-CTO), this event is perhaps the only occasion where the keynote presentations are pitched high enough that the business side of the enterprise would get value from participation.

HPE has a lot more to do when it comes to marketing outreach. The NonStop value proposition remains significant and in times where folks are concerned about security and indeed, with so many outages of late availability continues to be discussed, NonStop not only holds significance for those within the data center but with HPE’s continuing investment in support of open platforms, NonStop is becoming a lot more affordable to a much wider community. The biggest plus HPE NonStop has going for it is the HPE direct sales force, operating across all geographies, where the message about NonStop is delivered and where new customers are signed up. However, there is still no substitute for the NonStop community for participating in NonStop centric events and for all involved, it is the NonStop Technical Boot Camp that gives every stakeholder in the NonStop community the biggest bang for the buck!
Richard Buckle

Cofounder and CEO

Pyalla Technologies, LLC