Highlights from the NonStop Technical Boot Camp 2021

October 5th to 7th saw the launch of the 2021 all-virtual Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) NonStop Technical Boot Camp.

In a panel discussion I featured on with other specialists in the industry, one of the topics covered the most important things to monitor on an HPE NonStop system.

In this blog, we’ll cover some of the key points discussed and how IR provides deep visibility into HPE NonStop systems.

The importance of analytics-driven solutions

HPE NonStop systems process transactions for some of the most important financial institutions in the world. For any NonStop user today, whether NonStop is in support of financial institutions or simply providing the underlying infrastructure of other mission-critical applications, it’s vital to keep up with changing market demands.

Analytics deliver real-time intelligence and actionable insights that no business can afford to be without.

Analytics-driven strategies can lead to increased profitability by reducing costs and optimizing revenue in a great variety of areas. In fact, there’s a plethora of information and actionable insights to be harvested from your payments data.

Transaction volumes are increasing, and new payment methods are rapidly emerging, along with greater customer expectations for a seamless, personalized payments experience.

IR's analytics capabilities allow these businesses to understand the pockets and patterns of growth and profitability, allowing institutions to align their IT and business applications with the insight and focus to meet and exceed their annual and strategic objectives.

A worldwide view from one window

With NonStop systems geographically located across multiple data centers, different territories, and countries, with GDPR and other data privacy regulations, it’s most important to have a holistic view of your payment solutions that manages your data the way you require. IR’s solutions don’t just give you specific details of one NonStop but can provide an all-inclusive, widespread picture of every NonStop system.

Visualization of any solution in operation is very important to those within the data center, and IR has developed a reputation among the NonStop community as the best solution for visibility.

Staying ahead of potential problems

The ability to monitor solutions from a deep level is critical. Problems don’t appear overnight. Contrary to what most believe, problems are built up over time, and by the time they appear on your screen, it’s often the final symptom and usually too late to resolve quickly. What matters most is what you can’t see.

Most often, issues occur after the rollout of new features – software updates from within the NonStop, upstream, or downstream on external platforms. It’s vital that you’re able to see how your applications are currently behaving and compare that to historical and expected patterns, evaluating deviations to align system resources, and stay one step ahead of the problem escalation process.

Keeping track of metrics

Monitoring is essential not only from an IT point of view, but you need the ability to look at cyclical data and compare the volume of transactions from one calendar point to another.

For example, how is this ‘three-day weekend’ compared to last year or other three-day weekends? If you can see real-time activity and compare it to historical data, you have a complete view of where you should be. Value-added metrics can take your analytics to another level and help businesses increase revenue.

The growing trend of self-service

From a business point of view, self-service is a growing trend in performance management and monitoring. Easily navigable dashboards allow users to go in and see what they need to see – without giving them complicated metrics that IT sees. Payment processors, customer management, or merchants can see what’s going on through their own web UI on Prognosis. They can look at approval and decline rates and what it means to the customer and the business.

When it comes to monitoring your payments solutions, IR has decades of experience in real-world scenarios, featuring some of the biggest global financial institutions. Complete visibility and detailed analytics give you control over your entire payments environment and lets you proactively prevent issues before they impact your customers.