Network Technologies International
Protect Your Data from Disasters

For thousands of years, following the classical theory, everything in life was constructed with four basic elements: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Perhaps the time has arrived to modify the theory and add Data to the list.

As we move from an era of information to an age of insight, the significance of data becomes more relevant to industry analysts operating worldwide. Today, companies leverage data to strategise their business objectives according to changing market needs. From survival to innovation to competitive edge, data is connecting all the dots. It thereby becomes imperative for organisations to ensure the use of standard data to extract information that corresponds to altering the business climate and provides a comprehensive understanding of the same. To achieve this, businesses must re-imagine the way they manage and safeguard their critical data to stay relevant amidst transforming market conditions. In that regard, enterprises are now considering data replication a crucial part of their business propositions and not just a mere backup strategy. That said, Network Technologies International (NTI) is making a difference by ensuring that customers’ data is accurately replicated for the continuation, transformation, integration, and proper distribution across the business.

“When the industry talks of digital exhaust-repetition of data to where it becomes overwhelming, it is important to realise that all data is crucial and that data as it is created is the freshest, most relevant, and of a nature that is most sought after,” says Timothy J. Dunne, Global Director, Worldwide Sales, Network Technologies International. He explains that for processes to continue, data needs to be replicated, distributed, integrated, and transformed. This is where NTI is in a league of its own—provisioning excellence in data in every sense.

As a premier provider of mission-critical disaster recovery solutions for HPE NonStop, NTI ensures data gets to where it is most needed—replicated for business continuity, transformed for business opportunity, integrated for business insight, and distributed for business cooperation. Through HPE NonStop, NTI replicates data instantly based on real-time transactions to provide a cognitive perspective needed for inclusion in data analytics processing. Decades ago, the advent of payment applications fuelled the desire to use DRNet® on the NonStop platform to enhance fault tolerance, high-performance, and reliability amongst non-protected TMF databases. Seizing the opportunity, NTI attracted the limelight as the sole third-party solutions provider to offer support for both TMF-audited and non-audited database support.

Today, NTI’s distinguished customer base represents a substantial cross-section of HPE NonStop users–namely banks, credit unions, payments processors, switch providers, retailers, healthcare, and a whole host of unnamed users of equal importance.

With the increase in transaction volumes and evolution of distributed computing among customers like financial institutions/banks, the pre-conceived simplistic backup use-case soon became an ‘active-active use case’ to maintain transparency of data through synchronisation of on-line databases across two or more remotely located NonStop systems.

“As more and more data were generated, various lines of business developed disparate appetites to consume–thus the requirement to replicate data off NonStop to a less expensive database for reporting became especially important,” says Dunne. He explains that with the gradual growth in business intelligence, data warehouses, data lakes, and the like, almost every transactional piece of data generated on the NonStop was consumed elsewhere.

At heart, NTI believes that the NonStop community is best served by enterprise-level data replication and data integration solutions across ‘bet your business' mission-critical payments and infrastructure applications including alternative lines of business demanding, accuracy, reliability, and high-availability. When it comes to HPE and the HPE NonStop product suite, NTI looks at the product line that survives any single point of failure. In that regard, NTI’s DRNet® product suite uniquely supports the various use cases, directly sold or supported in the NonStop realm. NTI positions its DRNet® as a replacement technology to mitigate support challenges posed by incumbent technologies, ensure successful migration and go-live, and substantially reduce the end-users Annual Operational Expense. Precisely, NTI moves the data where it needs to go.

A question that arises here: how does NTI steer ahead of the competition curve?

The answer lies in its ingrained technical capabilities and know-how, ability to offer the lowest total cost of ownership for directly supported proven enterprise data replication and integration solution, and capacity to build strong ties with customers through 24/7 support teams. At the outset, by offering its solutions as a single vendor, NTI fully supports both physical and virtual NonStop servers (vNS). Moreover, by leveraging one vNS investment into another, NTI built the first infrastructure backbone to offer virtual NonStop as a service (vNSaaS).

To illustrate NTI’s onboarding process with clients, Dunne recalls an instance when a reputed bank had approached the company. The bank had been using two NonStops utilising Base24 from ACI Worldwide to authorise ATM-acquired and Bank’s debit card transactions. The Bank’s business objective was to run active-active configuration to ensure files that are updated for each transaction are kept in sync between the two NonStop servers and perform (Disaster/Recovery) DR switchovers, allowing BASE24 to run from a single NonStop server without any loss of service to the customer. “Should an unlikely event occur resulting in a loss of the system, all the transaction log data on the other systems had to allow for Transaction Log File (TLF) extracts and pass the data downstream to the host. And lastly, this customer also needed to refresh debit card files promptly,” informs Dunne. The technical requirements demanded an ability to alter replication of files as requirements change, to replicate both TMF-audited files and those without, replicate updates at extremely high TPS rates, have user-exists available for customers, and merge multiple files into single files with demonstrated stability and direct support–requirements DRNet® fully supported. NTI earned the bank’s business over 20 years ago, thanks to its robust product portfolio and skilled workforce. Since then, the bank’s DR procedures have been greatly enhanced and the time required to perform DR switchovers and to refresh card files has been greatly reduced.

With innovation at its core, NTI looks forward to fulfilling its role of being the leading provider of robust data replication and data integration solutions globally. The company is committed to adapt and evolve in the years to come by expanding its product set and diversifying its clientele base by penetrating new markets where fresh data combined with robust technologies is the need. Next in the cards, NTI plans to support select Intel x86-based models of HPE’s Edgeline platforms technology intended to address computational limitations through DRNet®. Scaling up its global footprint through new customer relationships and distribution channels, NTI recently joined hands with Concerto Software and Services of Mumbai to widen the scope of DRNet® into diverse domains. “Our vision is to continue to adapt and evolve; we want to meet customer and market demands as technology changes in the days to come,” concludes Dunne.