NonStop Systems Introduction

Introduction

NonStop Systems Introduction—527825-001

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The Zero Latency Enterprise

A zero latency enterprise is a company that has removed latency from its operations

so that business events that occur anywhere in the organization can immediately

trigger appropriate actions across all other parts of the company. In the business

sense, latency can be defined as the time required for a transaction to complete and

for the results of that transaction to be propagated to all systems and applications

where it is needed. In a zero latency enterprise, that delay is reduced to very nearly

zero; in other words, current information is available immediately to all points in the

company where it is needed.

The term zero latency enterprise, when used to characterize a computer system,

refers to an infrastructure that integrates the company’s diverse application systems in

such a way as to: (a) provide near-instantaneous awareness throughout the company

of events and data tracked by any one of the applications and (b) enable intelligent

organizational responses in real time. Throughout this manual, the term “ZLE system”

is used to describe the computer architecture that enables a business to function as a

zero latency enterprise.

Why is the level of latency important in a business system? In today’s business

environment, customers expect that all information presented to them is current

throughout the entire business. If a customer places an order, the customer expects to

see that order reflected, in real time, everywhere he or she has access to that

information: the business’s Web site, the customer service center, the customer loyalty

program. Both internal and external users of business systems are becoming

increasingly intolerant of businesses where they see transactions suffering because of

information latency.

Consider the predicament of a customer who has the following experience. Needing to

be in another city for a business meeting, the customer connects to the Web site of the

airline he uses frequently and makes a flight booking, taking advantage of the airline’s

eBusiness facility by paying online with a credit card. However, immediately thereafter,

the meeting timetable is changed, and the customer logs back into the Web site to

change the booking. But he can find no details of the booking: the eBusiness booking

has not yet propagated to the web server’s database. The customer then calls the

airline’s customer service center to arrange a different flight in person. But the service

representative is unable to assist because as far as he can tell, no such booking exists:

it hasn’t shown up on the Customer Service computer yet. The result: a frustrated and

unhappy customer.

In a true zero latency environment, the results of a transaction are immediately

available wherever they are needed. If a zero latency system were implemented in the

previous example, the results of the original booking transaction would be immediately

available at all the customer contact points, and could readily be changed to

accommodate the customer.

For another example, consider a customer who purchases an item from a retail store

and pays with a credit card. Suppose this customer has a long history of many large

purchases with the company and has never experienced any credit problems.