Santanu Ghose

The global economic downturn has forced industries to focus on prioritising technology spend to improve productivity, in addition to generating savings from their IT investments. In this context, it's interesting that Hewlett-Packard is betting on the NonStop server technology, by expanding its offerings to include small and medium-sized (SME) customers.

The company recently celebrated its 35th anniversary of NonStop Server technology at its annual India do in Goa.

"We have been moving towards industry standard hardware as it gets more and more reliable. Now, we can drive down costs while maintaining the NonStop capabilities of fault tolerance and massive scale," says Santanu Ghose, Country Head, Business Critical Systems and NonStop Servers, HP India. eWorld caught up with Ghose to trace NonStop's journey over the years. Excerpts:

Thirty-five years ago - almost 15 years before the birth of the PC - we started a revolution in business computing. Tandem Computers Incorporated (now the HP NonStop Enterprise Division) was founded in Cupertino in November 1974 by James G. Treybig and three former HP engineers. Their vision was to build a machine with enough sophistication to withstand the loss of any single component - a computer with "no single point of failure. NonStopT technology was thus created. The first NonStop server was designed to perform a critical task - fault-tolerant transaction processing - better than any other computing platform in the world.

For nearly three decades, NonStop technology has led the way in building continuously available, reliable solutions to handle the world's most demanding computing environments - from the first electronic payment networks and online stock-trading systems, to telecom networks and supply chain management systems, to today's online travel portals and the world's largest e-mail system.

NonStop computing made its name in the industries that first saw the value of real-time transaction processing. Today, as more commerce moves to the Internet, these industries - not to mention emerging e-businesses - are realising that the path to new revenue streams and increased profitability is through the extension of online transaction processing to its logical next generation: the real-time enterprise. In the 1970s, NonStop fundamentals - continuous availability, virtually unlimited scalability, and proven data integrity - were an innovation. Today, they are a necessity.

The key fundamentals of the HP NonStop have remained the same over the years; however HP NonStop has evolved to deliver significantly improved performance, technology based on industry standard architecture using Intel Itanium chipsets and improved energy efficiency.

The HP Integrity NonStop family now starts with "seven 9s" (99.99999 per cent availability). Some key changes, over time, include the standardisation of NonStop based on Intel Itanium architecture; leveraging the power of HP Blade architecture to deliver lower TCO and energy efficiency and collaborating with ISVs (independent software vendors) to create an ecosystem of solutions based on NonStop.

HP's NonStop technology powers some of the most critical installations of the country, from banks and stock exchanges to telecommunications, Government and healthcare of the country. HP had over 63 per cent market share in calendar 2008. Customers include Bombay Stock Exchange, State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, Bank of Baroda, ICICI Bank, Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices and Canara Bank.

In India, HP has a strong development and R&D community based in Bangalore which helps develop the next generation NonStop technology for customers not only in India but also across the world.

HP recently announced a new initiative to partner with ISVs in the country. With technology enablement by HP, ISVs will be able to create end-to-end deployable customer solutions and reduce costs both in physical and virtual environments. The ISV community will also work closely with HP ESS and Vertical teams on customer opportunities.

The programme will focus on joint go-to-market, training and certification initiatives. There are almost 250 ISVs in India, who have signed up for this programme.

Economic downturns can more than double the likelihood that a business significantly changes its industry ranking, and those that make it into the top quartile during a downturn typically sustain their market premium for an average of three years.

Our customers were focused on both strategic cost reductions and supporting long-term business growth. It is not about spending less by simply cutting costs across the board, which runs the risk of ending up with IT that is inefficient, outdated and unable to provide a competitive advantage. Instead it is about strategic spending and prioritising technology investments, so you ride the crest when the economy recovers.

As to innovation, using the same amount of power as existing NonStop server offerings, the NonStop Blade delivers twice the performance and occupies half the data centre space. Additionally, the NonStop BladeSystem offers 35 per cent lower total cost of ownership than competing offerings and up to a 50 per cent decrease in cost per transaction.

Many of world's major industries rely on NonStop servers, for example:

Telecommunications: More than 135 public telephone companies currently rely on NonStop technology. More than half of all 9/11 calls in the US and the majority of wireless calls worldwide depend on NonStop servers.

Finance: Eighty per cent of all ATM transactions worldwide and 66 per cent of all point-of-sale transactions worldwide are handled by NonStop servers. NonStop technology powers 75 per cent of the world's 100 largest electronic funds transfer networks and 106 of the world's 120 stock exchanges.

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