“Data; it’s about data!” Furthermore, when it comes to data today it’s also about data analytics where data is all important and more data, well, even more important. According to Gartner, “Today, disciplines are merging and approaches to data and analytics are becoming more holistic and encompassing the entire business. Forward-thinking organizations are already on this path.” Around the corner, CIOs everywhere are looking at the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) with thoughts of capitalizing on augmented reality and deep learning which are coming closer to reality than many in the industry are prepared to acknowledge. However, no matter which way you cut it, it’s still all about the data and having data in the right place, at the right time, uncompromised and complete. For the NonStop community, much of this isn’t coming as a surprise as for many years solutions that demand 24 x 7 operations with total data integrity have been running on NonStop!
In its definitive paper on the topic of data and analytics, 2017: The Year That Data and Analytics Go Mainstream (already referenced above), contributor Rob van der Meulen of Gartner wrote that, “Shifting the way organization uses data and analytics more toward driving business operations requires a new approach to data architectures, which many organizations are already building. Last year Gartner research found that 45% of IT professionals had indicated that new data and analytics projects were in the ‘design’ and ‘select’ phases. However, existing data architectures are in most cases not ready for the future of data and analytics.” This comes as no surprise either to the NonStop community as they have been witnessing such shifts in the way organizations use data for some time – it surprises no one, for instance, that HPE IT came to the conclusion that they should center all data projects on the new NonStop X featuring NonStop SQL/MX deployed as a DBaaS supporting multi-tenancy.
However, even when centralizing mission critical data onto NonStop systems, the data and the interrelationships between the data means that the absence of just a single piece of data can be catastrophic and should that data arrive at a time when a system is down for any reason, organizations can suffer financial losses, not to mention dents being made to their reputation. Reliance on a single system inside of a single data center are no longer the norm for many organizations such that today, it is not unusual for these organizations to have two or three data centers just to ensure business continuity can be provided despite whatever havoc may occur at any one site. When it comes to data replication in support of business continuity, NonStop users can select from a number of very good products, all directed at ensuring data is never lost.
In the post of January 26, 2018, to the LinkedIn blog, Pulse, Technology continues to evolve and DRNet is right there for the NonStop community! noted that, “For the bulk of solutions running on NonStop systems today the focus remains on providing the level of service business requires of mission critical applications. That is providing true 24 x 7 x forever operations that extend well beyond a single system and a single application!” The post then noted that, “For the HPE NonStop community this has meant deploying data replication software and while there are a number of different products available to NonStop users NTI has been providing DRNet for several decades now and over the time has accumulated literally hundreds of years of experience in what it takes to ensure the fallout from any potential disaster is mitigated in a manner that allows operations to continue.” Yes, DRNet is one of those very good products and has proved popular with the NonStop community.
However, the NonStop community is asking a lot more questions of NonStop vendors as they watch the rapid delivery of entirely new products and technologies coming from the NonStop development team of late. Can all of these vendors keep up? Can the products we relied upon for years make the grade? Has the time arrived for us to re-evaluate decisions taken years if not decades ago? HPE IT may be responsible for driving NonStop development to provide the new capabilities that HPE IT needs, but they have the good fortune of enjoying the closest possible relationship of all with NonStop development – they are both on the same team. But can NonStop vendors capitalize on these changes as rapidly as HPE IT?
In the post to the LinkedIn blog, Pulse, NTI referenced a quote from Tim Dunne, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales, NTI. According to Dunne, “We have a lot of really good customers that many in the NonStop community know little about. But over the years we have built such a strong relationship with NonStop customers worldwide that it has prepared us well when it comes to accommodating all the changes coming from the HPE NonStop team and evolving technologies such as the Cloud and virtualized NonStop.” Dunne was also quick to point out that at NTI, “We have an exceptional engineering and development teams and have alternative offerings many NonStop users may find a better proposition when it comes to data replication,” added Dunne. “We have always been extremely flexible with our deployment models and it is really a great time for the NonStop user community to give renewed consideration to what they chose for data replication going forward.”
Last month we closed with comments concerning change and of how change is an unstoppable force. Like everyone else in the NonStop community we are watching how rapidly the NonStop development team is producing products, but we have both the installed customer base and the quality engineering team that allows us to ease any fears the NonStop community may have about data replication and most important of all, the prospect of pursuing changes to products previously relied upon for data replication. We have the track record, the partnerships and most important of all the product and if you have as yet not given DRNet consideration as you step up your support of data and data analytics, then perhaps it is time to take a look. We will be at RUG events worldwide in 2018 and you will see many more articles in recognized publications as well as on social media so call all email us at any time. We would be only too happy to discuss with you how best we can address your changing needs that are being driven by data and about your changing requirements for data replication.
(Reprinted from NonStop Insider digital publication: February, 2018 )
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