DRNet – THE fabric for hybrid IT

The level of participation in HPE NonStop’s annual NonStop Technical Boot Camp (TBC) was encouraging to see and now that attendees have returned home, there is ample time to cover topics that were popular at the event. Clearly, it’s become increasingly noticeable that enterprises worldwide are embracing hybrid IT and that clouds are playing an important role in many of the decisions enterprises are making. Who wouldn’t want to become more productive at less cost? Who wouldn’t want to break the cycle of upfront investments for a more flexible, pay-as-you-go, model? The number of times presentations highlighting the benefits of IT embracing an Operational Expense (OpEx) model, versus the traditional Capital Expense (CapEx) options of the past, were hard to miss. The NonStop team is fully behind models that extend the “as-a-Service” option even as at this time these were baby-steps on a journey many NonStop users would be undertaking over the course of the coming decade. This is ...

The NonStop Technical Boot Camp (TBC) is well and truly behind us even as the NonStop community is anticipating more news to come from the HPE NonStop team following updates on numerous actions being taken. RFPs have been handed out as well as more news about the move to add significantly to the services offerings available to NonStop users looking for a helping hand as they move to NonStop X and to the L-Series OS and stack. Boot Camp didn’t hold too many surprises. It was always expected that, at some point, HPE would outline the end of the line for the Itanium systems – the NonStop I family – and while there will be a few NonStop users taking a little longer than others to complete the migration, HPE is doing a good job of ensuring they will not be left high and dry just yet. At NTI we are seeing that HPE is giving support to the NonStop team and this is an encouraging sign – for NonStop users it signals modern capabilities being provided to better enhance NonStop systems...

With so much happening across the NonStop community and with even more new ways to deploy NonStop today the talk is definitely all about the “as-a-service” development of late as yes, as surprised as we all may be, it looks to us like NonStop is going to make a contribution to this segment of the marketplace. Who knew? Will it herald the beginning of a new era of NonStop? Will it confuse traditionalists even as it attracts new users to NonStop – it’s definitely a time when you cannot afford to take your eyes off of NonStop even for a minute!  What is coming next from HPE NonStop development and how are they succeeding with what has already been announced and is now being delivered? And more importantly perhaps, is NonStop being considered for inclusion in even more HPE programs for Hybrid IT and yes, the Edge too? Little did the NonStop community fully understand the ramifications of porting NonStop to the Intel x86 architecture but we are all beginning to see for ourselves...

For almost a year now we have all seen slides in HPE NonStop presentations alluding to the third option for consuming NonStop – as a service. Looking at the complete picture, we can call up HPE and purchase a loaded NonStop X system that will meet all of our needs or we can opt instead to run virtualized NonStop, where we purchase the new converged virtualized NonStop, the NS2. But there is also an option to simply tap your friendly vendor on the arm and ask to run a couple of NonStop applications from the service the vendor is providing. For now, this is a little vague in terms of how to license and who will become one of those friendly vendors, but the die is cast. We will have three significant options to consider comes this time next year. There is no question that HPE has made a sizable investment in NonStop and no community is more surprised to read this than the NonStop community. After a decade of perceived indecision on the part of those close to NonStop it now appears ...