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Where do your ATMs connect? HP delivers x86, NonStop!
At the end of March, the HP enterprise group will announce the specifics of NonStop X, which will support Intel x86 architecture
March 26, 2015 by Richard Buckle — Founder and CEO, Pyalla Technologies, LLC
In my last couple of posts I wrote of the experiences I had attending two ATM- and payments-oriented events, practically back to back. First was the ATMIA US conference in Las Vegas and then BAI Payments Connect in Phoenix.
I spent as much time as I could on the exhibit floor, where I was able to catch up with a number of participants I otherwise knew only from the voice on the other end of a phone line. At the same time, I couldn't help noticing just how many vendors now had hired folks I knew well during my time with ACI Worldwide.
There was NCR's Rod Bungey who caught me by surprise, as did Rich Greene from Ascert. Doug Parr from Prairie Cloudware was another former colleague, as was BAE Systems' Dena Hamilton. Indeed, it was Dena who reminded me that the last time we met was back in the early 2000s at an East Coast seafood restaurant in Singapore.
However, my discussions and interviews weren't limited to just these folks and I need to thank those who arranged for me to spend time with people like Fiserv's Mike Urban and First Data's Rishi Chhabra. While Mike talked about new initiatives focused on fraud protection — in particular Fiserv's Fraud Risk and Fraud Guard solutions — Rishi educated me about what First Data is doing to help merchants gain better insight into consumer behavior — it looks like SpendTrend analytics appeal to many merchants as well as financial institutions. Look for more on these companies and their product offerings in coming posts.
As I walked by the registration desks at the ATMIA and BAI events, I couldn't help noticing the badges of folks who continue to depend on HP NonStop systems to support their ATM and POS networks — Major FIs like Wells Fargo, Chase, Bank of America, and CIBC, and big retailers like The Home Depot, Safeway, Hudson Bay and others.
At the end of March, the HP enterprise group will be announcing the specifics of its latest addition to the enterprise NonStop systems family, NonStop X, which will support Intel x86 architecture — a development that I first mentioned in a November 2012 post.
What to expect with the new family of NonStop X systems? More solutions and more customers? More openness and greater use of commoditization? More performance for a lot less money? Anecdotally at least, it would seem that all of the above are in the cards.
When NonStop X plans were unwrapped, I turned to OmniPayments Inc. CEO Yash Kapadia for the story. Since he has been testing and validating his software on NonStop X, I checked in with him again for an update.
Today we support customers running on many generations of NonStop systems ... we have customers relying on NonStop systems packaged on blades as well as on racks and in towers — it's important for them to have a partner like us who is prepared to work with them no matter the heritage of the NonStop system.
It's important, too, these customers know that as they wrestle with the challenges being faced by all FIs today — be it new and evolving mobile channels, the rollout of EMV support ... or simply the fallout from increased industry and regulatory oversight, OmniPayments is already providing solutions in one part of the planet or another — it's just what we have been doing for three decades.
What does surprise me is that there continues to be a myopic view of NonStop systems shared by many FIs — those who haven't seen the value that comes with a platform that simply doesn't go down for any reason. Such views have seen us support a number of different models in support of our customers.
More enlightening perhaps were Yash's insights into how vendors will deliver solutions in the coming years. "Customers will be able to purchase their own new NonStop X system and run our solution just as they can utilize our data centers with us operating pretty much as a service provider as of old."
Perhaps more interesting perhaps to FIs, Yash said, is the fact that his company can now provision almost any customer from multilocation cloud services where OmniPayments solutions are provided SaaS — something that surprises many FIs, he said.
"[T]oday we have the ability to run our switches from within the cloud as it supports all international transaction networks — Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover in the U.S., and PROSA and eGlobal in Latin America," Yash said. "But the key here is that FIs can leverage our SaaS offerings for as low as $5,000 per month. That's it — and it's continuing to run on NonStop! Being myopic may have its place but today, with the NonStop X family of systems coming from HP, so doing has little relevance in the world of financial transaction processing."
My time with solutions vendors is always enlightening and fertile ground for many stories. However, I am especially excited about upcoming general release of the latest addition to the NonStop family of systems, given just how many members of ATMIA rely on their capabilities today.
Who knows — should HP deliver on price and performance criteria as I would like, there might be even more ATMIA members running NonStop in the very near future.
About Richard Buckle
Richard Buckle is the founder and CEO of Pyalla Technologies, LLC. He has enjoyed a long association with the Information Technology (IT) industry as a user, vendor, and more recently, as an industry commentator, thought leader, columnist and blogger. Richard participates in the HPE VIP Community where he is part of their influencer team.
