DRNet – THE fabric for hybrid IT

  The 2020 NonStop Technical Boot Camp (TBC), the All-Digital Experience, as it was promoted, is now behind us. For many seasoned NonStop community members, the knowledge that 2,000 community members had registered for the event and that the count of active participants routinely pushed north of 1,500 truly signifies that there is continued interest in all things NonStop. Within the industry, the “stickiness” of NonStop is well-known, but even so this turn-out by the NonStop community must rate among the highest ever dating back to the days of ITUG Summits past.   In the presentations given by NonStop team members, there was the inclusion of the NonStop partner ecosystem. A bright display of vendor logos, whether they sold products, provided services or consulted on everything from utilities and frameworks to the NS SQL/MX database. The NonStop partner community is thriving and in ways that continues to surprise other technology communities and for good reason. The knowledge o...

According to HPE CEO, Antonio Neri, we are entering the age of insight. “Researchers and providers were overwhelmed by the volume of the data - unable to create insights and action from portions of information. I believe we are nearing the end of the information era, which focused on generating and collecting massive amounts of data - data that could not be brought together to create timely insights and actions to change our future,” said Neri at this year’s HPE Discover virtual event. “The next decade must be about insights and discoveries …” Industry bloggers have picked up on this renewed emphasis on insight as well. In a post last year, one such blogger began by saying, “As disruptive technologies emerge and find large-scale adoption, there is an influx of massive amounts of data within enterprises. Scattered data exists across various systems in companies … it’s important to have it streamlined, organized, and simplified into a cohesive whole.” In the summation, the blogger reiter...

  The boys are back on the diamond swinging for the fences while others are taking to the grid iron. Cars are once again racing on track even as rugby down-under is heading for finals. Everywhere you look in these troubled times, there are contests underway and the crowds may be cardboard cut-outs, but there is no denying that competitions are being taken seriously, no matter the contest.   When it comes to technology, competition couldn’t be fiercer. The potential to get your message before millions of “eyeballs” has become the main marketing outlet for many in business and for good reason, there are fewer readers of traditional media and network television is under real threat from streaming services. Hands up if you have access to channels from Amazon Prime, Netflix and Disney+? Point is, none of this is lost on the NonStop community as we watch vendors vie for prominence in any decision-making situation.   One of the real benefits NonStop users enjoy is a cons...

”Maintaining the status quo is a recipe for stagnation,” so one source tapped recently. More to my way of thinking, when it comes to accepting the status quo, was the observation by Henry Ford; “If I would’ve asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Among the NonStop community there has never been support for just doing the same time and time again, rather, there was always a willingness to pursue new opportunities so long as the risk to NonStop itself could be managed. No NonStop user wanted to ever compromise the availability attribute of NonStop!   There continues to be a lot of emphasis placed on Digital Transformation (DX). New IDC Spending Guide Shows Continued Growth for Digital Transformation in 2020, Despite the Challenges Presented by the COVID-19 Pandemic , an IDC update of May 20, 2020, made it very clear that for the foreseeable future, DX would involve considerable effort being devoted to ensuring the right product mix is deployed across t...

News continues to be bleak when it comes to events. For the NonStop community it’s more a case of there being plenty of support for events even when they cannot take place along traditional lines. The NonStop community has always been a community that enjoys opportunities to network but 2020 is a year in transition. For the foreseeable future it looks as though all events will be virtual! Questions are now being asked as to whether this is the new reality. The new normal, if you like. However, history shows that communities adapt rapidly to changing conditions and as much as we like to network, it seems more than likely that virtual events will become increasingly fashionable. It’s hardly likely following investments in support of virtual events to see them fade away. News out of Europe has just been received informing us all that the pan-European event hosted by GTUG will not go ahead as planned. Already postponed once, moving back from May to be rescheduled for September...

Our attention of late has been directed at major vendor events. Just this week there were major events held by HPE and Apple and last week it was Cisco Live. There have been regional events for the NonStop community as well. What has differentiated these events from anything experienced in the past is that they were virtual events – programs developed by vendors that allowed us to sit at our desks to watch the events unfold. Different? Of course; and for some sessions, a little difficult to take! However, their success cannot diminish the fact that in today’s new normal world, there are few alternatives to such approaches. At HPE Discover 2020 there were even hands-on developer labs (you needed to sign up for these in advance) where HPE committed considerable compute resources and where the responses coming from those who participated were very positive. It is against this backdrop that one phrase kept coming up – Business Continuity. For most attendees it took a while to s...

No matter how much we invest today in our home office, working from home is still that; we are at home, working. For many vendors within the NonStop community there has always been some of their employees who qualified as remote workers, but with today’s global pandemic still holding sway over much of the planet, it’s as if our home office has become the new “work central.” Almost nothing we do in support of NonStop customers sees us moving all that far away from our desks, whether set up in the living room, on the deck, in the basement or in the garage. What NTI would like to emphasize is that from its earliest days, NTI has been about supporting our employees who prefer to work remotely. Development and support have worked remotely for many years – it’s just the nature of our business, working with the NonStop community, but today, you will find all of NTI working from home in accordance with directives and mandates imposed globally. It has always been about our people and we h...