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We’ve had a busy year here at NuWave, and as of this writing, NonStop TBC hasn’t even happened yet! This year was NuWave’s 20th anniversary, as you may have read about in the July/August issue of The Connection, and it was also the 15th anniversary of our partnership with TIC Software, NuWave’s primary reseller in the United States and Canada. This year, we’ve also been doing a lot of traveling to meet all of you lovely NonStoppers and to spread the word about Web services!
As usual, we kicked off our 2019 conferences with SunTUG in Tampa, Florida on March 1st. Since NuWave’s founder, Ernie Guerrera, resides in the Tampa area, he was excited to see some old friends and talk modernization with the local NonStop group. TIC also presented on future-proofing NonStop using NuWave’s LightWave products.
In April, we headed to NYTUG–an event that I had organized in years prior, and Peter Schvarcz did a great job with this year. Ken Goldman, HPE Director of NonStop Sales for North America, delivered the great news that there has been a significant increase in NonStop sales in 2018, due partly to some new customers in the US and abroad. I co-presented with Phil Ly from TIC, where I talked about some new and exciting customer use cases, showcasing the ways in which our customers add value to their NonStop applications, and Phil presented on how customers are using LightWave ServerTM to eliminate greenscreens and LightWave ClientTM to access cloud services.
In early May, we travelled to one of the rotating shows, LATUG (Latin America Tandem User Group), which was an excellent event and was held at the historic Hotel Tequendama in Bogota, Colombia this year. There was a high level of customer engagement at this event, with multiple customer presentations, including the keynote session, which was given by Gina Pardo from Assendared. There was a wonderful welcome party on the first night, which included drinks (of course), appetizers, and a very entertaining traditional Colombian dance performance. We presented (with a translator) on the variety of ways to securely access NonStop applications, and we enjoyed meeting with the local NonStop users, as well as our Colombian reseller, PTESA. I also enjoyed a local dinner with the other NonStop partners in attendance:
View from Edinburgh Castle
HPE’s presence was high at ETBC, with informative presentations from Neil Davis, Franz Koenig, Mark Pollans, and the new director of NonStop Engineering, Teresa Sorg. We presented on our solution for integrating existing HPE NonStop applications with R3 Corda–something NonStop users have been very excited about–and had our live demo available at the booth to share with attendees.
The keynote presentation was unique and interesting, as the theme was finding meaning in your work. It was presented by Justin Wren, a.k.a The Big Pygmy, a professional MMA fighter and founder of the organization Fight for the Forgotten. (I later found his book on my bookshelf at home–small world!) He talked about his work in Africa helping forgotten Pygmy tribes rebuild their villages by installing clean water solutions and advocating for their right to safety and the freedom to provide food for their families. We had a chance to talk with Andrew’s long-haired doppelganger during the “Taste of Scotland Gala Dinner”, organized by BITUG:
The dinner function also included bagpipe music, excellent wine, and of course, the traditional Scottish dish haggis! We even got to hear Robert Burns’ poem “Address to a Haggis”–which we didn’t understand a word of but found very entertaining–acted out with the haggis before we ate it!
The always wonderful North Texas Tandem User Group (N2TUG) show was held on June 27th at the sprawling Gaylord Texan Resort in Grapevine, Texas. As usual, the event was extremely well-attended, showing the positive state of NonStop usage in Texas. Meg Watson, Master Engineer at the NonStop ATC, presented on DevOps, which was the theme of the conference. HPE’s Justin Simonds presented on the history of artificial intelligence, and NuWave and TIC co-presented on how HPE NonStop customers can gain a competitive advantage using NuWave’s LightWave solutions.
HPE Partners Enjoying a Meal at the Partner Summit
HPE and Partners Gather at the End of the Taipei Conference
Later that week, we were doing it all over again in Taipei, Taiwan, with a partner day at the HPE Taiwan offices. We spent time with all the local partners, including Syscom, NuWave’s distributor in Taiwan. Friday was the customer event, this time held at the spectacular Grand Mayfull Hotel in Taipei. We saw similar presentations from the HPE folks, and once again we presented on REST-enabling NonStop applications, to a full room.
The recently rejuvenated Australian NonStop User Group (OZTUG) conference took place in early September, and NuWave’s Andrew Price (also the OZTUG Chair) was on-hand to answer all of the users’ NonStop modernization questions. HPE, OZTUG and the vendors were excited to present at the HPE NonStop Technology Summit/OZTUG conference this year. This event has struggled a little in the past, but with excellent funding from Intel and other vendors, and with logistical support from HPE and OZTUG, the event has rebounded in the last few years, with great turnouts in both Sydney and Melbourne. Each location has a full-day conference and uses the same agenda, attracting attendees from Sydney and Melbourne-based customers, but also from customers in Western Australia, Queensland, and even New Zealand!
This year, the Sydney event was held at the spectacular Intercontinental Hotel. Located at Circular Quay, with the right room (or from the pool), you can enjoy views like this:
Suresh Menon, HPE GM of Mission Critical Solutions in APJ, gave the first presentation of the day, which was a NonStop technology update. We were also lucky enough to have Prashanth Kamath, Senior Worldwide NonStop Product Manager, join us from Bangalore. He actually gave three presentations: a TS/MP update, a NonStop software update, and a presentation on NonStop virtualization. David Gillbanks from HPE Australia gave a very informative presentation on KDDI’s POC of NonStop Java and SQL/MX compared to Linux and Oracle. After the event, everyone was ready for a drink, and we enjoyed a cocktail hour at the same venue.
The venue for the Melbourne conference was the Park Hyatt Hotel. No harbor views, but a stunning location:
The Melbourne event followed much the same agenda, with Andrew Price giving a LightWave product update at both locations. His presentation generated some good discussion about how to integrate with internal API gateways, which are becoming more and more prevalent with NonStop users.
Overall, we’ve had a great year so far and can’t wait to cap it all off with NonStop TBC19 in San Francisco!
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