In my most recent travels I was able to work in almost a week in Las Vegas where I participated in the HPE big-tent marketing event, HPE Discover 2016. What made this particularly interesting was that it was the first event of its type that HPE has held in the Americas following the split. As we know, the former HP split in two, forming HPQ and HPE, where HPQ now focuses on consumer products including PCs and printers and HPE focuses on enterprise products and software, including servers, storage and networks. Central to all that HPE is doing is the digital transformation evolution currently under way as it fuels the “idea economy” to which HPE devotes so much of its marketing dollars.
The word focus came up time and time again and reinforced just how serious HPE is in its belief concerning the digital transformation that is under way. As HPE CEO Meg Whitman sees it, “digital transformation is no longer about choice; it’s mandatory. It’s real. (And it’s how) you reimagine your business.” Whitman also talked openly about the digital transformation as not being a one-off event or even a journey but rather, the pursuit of “multiple if not hundreds of small journeys!” As she came to the end of her opening remarks in her first keynote, Whitman made it clear that it was this focus by HPE on digital transformation that would “accelerate what’s next for you.”
According to Whitman, with the new HPE there will continue to be focus on secure, software-defined infrastructure while leveraging HPE hardware. Furthermore, according to Whitman, this HPE is a company that will “help run traditional IT better while bridging to clouds.” HPE will continue to pursue data center business, campus edge business as well as software with a renewed focus on “growing our big data analytic business.” But what is next for you? “Tomorrow belongs to the fast!” But in order to be fast it is clear that analytics, machine learning augmented reality will all play a role, according to Whitman.
In my post of June 20, 2016, to the NonStop community blog Real Time View, Hybrids, Connectivity, Analytics and Natural Language Processing … NonStop, of course! I dived into analytics and in so doing, focused on Striim. When it comes to data and data analytics, in my opinion, the premier vendor in this space that should be on the radar screens of every NonStop user is Striim. I noted at that time how the first PoCs by NonStop users were being done and shortly there would be news about a number of successful use-case scenarios everyone in the NonStop community will be able to relate to.
Perhaps a little more pragmatically, I also made the observation in that post of how today, Striim has become synonymous with data stream analytics and there will not be a transaction process solution operating anywhere without the deep ties to the environment that Striim so effectively supports. But still there are NonStop users who aren’t aware of what the Striim product can do and how it can help propel businesses into reimagining their business. Not only are there NonStop users who don’t know the value proposition of Striim but aren’t entirely sure of how Striim helps them integrate the world around NonStop with what is transpiring on NonStop.
In a recent publication, Striim Cofounder and EVP, Sami Akbay, said, “What our product does is it processes data from many sources and makes sense of it in real time, then it retains only the information that is interesting to the end-user, as defined by the user. The volume of data that most companies have access to is very large, but there is only a small amount that is useful. Our product finds that useful information and puts it back onto the NonStop.” The most important item to focus on here is that after analysis, Striim puts it back onto the NonStop – this is where the all-important integration of what is happening in the world outside of NonStop can integrate with the NonStop!
I continue to be surprised by how many times I am informed that no, we don’t want our NonStop exposed to the outside world. How short-sighted is this – businesses more critical applications often run on NonStop and that is why the NonStop system maintains a presence within the business. It can no longer operate in isolation but rather it too has to be a part of the many small journeys that are happening as business accelerates to what’s next. The idea economy is all about turning ideas into new business opportunities in hours if not minutes (and definitely not quarters or years) and to have any chance of doing this, integration between NonStop and the rest of the business world has to happen in real time!
“Striim helps companies leverage a wide variety of different types of streaming and operational data the instant it’s generated, before it lands on disk. From transaction or change data from Oracle, MySQL and HPE NonStop, to log files, social streams, sensor data, and much more. Then, this data can go through a context loop (see diagram on previous page), where results can be further analyzed to uncover additional business insights or fed back into the data pipeline to give context to streaming data,” explained Akbay. “Our platform is able to filter, aggregate, transform, and enrich data in-motion so companies can see what is happening as it happens.”
HPE is sparing no expense to inform the business world about its focus on digital transformation as it brings to the fore the concept of the idea economy. It’s all predicated on being able to respond to change in real time and to embrace new ideas as they appear where they bring value to the business. Striim plays such a critical role in making this happen and does so in real time just as HPE acknowledges it must happen. No matter how bright a spotlight shines on Striim, its focus on illuminating what’s happening as it happens echoes Whitman’s most critical message. When it comes to analytics then Striim is “no longer about choice; it’s mandatory. It’s real. (And it’s how) you reimagine your business.”
