In Memoriam: Lauren Uroff

- Sheila Johnson, CEO

When professionals join XYPRO, we like to think that they are joining more than just a software corporation; they are joining a close-knit family. To be sure, it’s close to impossible not to get incredibly attached to the wonderful, talented people that comprise the XYPRO family. So, it is with great sadness that we had to say goodbye to one of our long-time XYPRO family members, Lauren Uroff. We are indeed in deep mourning, but at the same time, trying to celebrate the wonderful and rich life Lauren led. Over the past few weeks, we have heard so many touching and uplifting stories about Lauren—she simply made a positive, lasting impact on everyone she knew.

Kristie Rusk is one of the many people who Lauren deeply touched.
Below, Kristie offers her memories and tribute to our Lauren.

I’ve been an employee of XYPRO since 1987.  I’ve been here longer than any other XYPRO employee, except for Sheila Johnson, our CEO.  When I look back at these past  23 years, each year has it’s own “memorable moment” associated with it, some of them good and some of them bad.  In 1994, we had the infamous Northridge earthquake and I have memories of us all ducking under the conference room table during aftershocks.  In 2001, it was the 9/11 attacks while the ITUG conference was being held in Anaheim.  We scrambled to find places for our customers to stay who were unable to fly home.  In 2006, we had two “XY-babies” born within a few weeks of each other and two more babies were born in 2008.  This year promises to have its share of good memories for XYPRO.  But sadly, the one event that I will remember 2010 for is the loss of my co-worker and friend, Lauren Uroff.

Lauren joined XYPRO in 1992 as a QA Analyst and later that year, her husband Scott also joined XYPRO.  They quickly became vital members of the XYPRO team.  Together, they helped build the XYPRO Security products to become the leading edge products they are today.  Lauren was intensely proud of her work.  When we began to offer XYGATE classes here at the XYPRO offices, Lauren was key to the building and teaching of those class materials.  She loved working with customers and if she met you, either on the phone or in person, she never forgot your name!  As valuable an asset Lauren was to XYPRO, for me, she was one of my closest friends here at the office.  Lauren and I shared many things over the years.  We held down the fort by ourselves at the office while everyone was attending ITUG Conferences, we laughed in the lunchroom about the latest “news of the day”.  Lauren was bright, witty, an avid reader, a seeker of knowledge – from the silly to the sublime.  Our conversations ranged from deep and philosophical to arguments about who we liked better on “Top Chef”.

As proud as Lauren was of her work, her greatest pride was her family, her husband Scott and her son James.  After James was born, she changed her status at XYPRO from full-time employee to that of an independent contractor, so that she could have the flexibility in her schedule to play an active role in his life.  She spent many hours volunteering at his school and never missed a concert or karate practice.  She was determined that he be a well-rounded and polite young man.

In 2009, Lauren was diagnosed with cancer.  She worked from home as often as she could, but her presence at the office became less and less.  In December, while preparing to come back to the office on a regular basis, we got the devastating news that the cancer had spread.  Three months later in March 2010, we lost her.

It is sad to think that the newer employees here at XYPRO will never get the opportunity to know or work with Lauren.  But, it helps to know that Lauren’s legacy will live on in the quality of the XYPRO products that she helped build, the customers who she helped support and most importantly in the lives of her family.

Kristie Rusk
-Vice President of Finance

Flat Screens, Light Bulbs and IBM, Oh My……

For me personally, EBUG (European BASE24 User Group) is quite a significant event for two reasons. Firstly it’s EMEA’s premier gathering for anyone with an interest in BASE24 and other related ACI products. And secondly, because it marks my first year of involvement/employment in the HP NonStop field – the 2009 EBUG in Prague last year was my first day on the job!

The big talking point from last year was ACI’s announcement that BASE24 ‘classic’ would be phased out within a couple of years and its new collaboration with IBM. It’s safe to say that this announcement wasn’t greeted with the warmth that ACI had expected.

A year later, we’re in Madrid, Spain, and there was far less controversy. ACI had obviously taken its customer’s feedback on board and stances have changed and relaxed. Deadlines for BASE24’s ‘sun-setting’ have been extended and it’s now talked about as the end of ‘support’ for BASE24 classic, as opposed to the product itself. It’s no huge surprise that ACI was still keen for as many of its customers as possible to migrate to BASE24-eps, pointing out that over 20 customers have now made the switch.

From what I gather, the IBM situation hasn’t seen the exodus from HP NonStop that certain parties might have been hoping for – I may be wrong, but I don’t know of any HP NonStop users who have jumped ship to IBM.  In fact, I dare say that ACI/IBM bringing hardware to the fore has actually resulted in a few NonStop Blade upgrades for existing HP customers. I can only see that as a good thing.  But don’t go thinking that IBM has admitted defeat, would there have been a ‘stand of the show’ award, IBM would have won it with ease...

In the XYPRO booth there were less plasma TVs and halogen light bulbs, but that didn’t mean there was any less activity.  Many thanks to all those who dropped by for a chat, to pick up product info and to enter their business card to win an HP Netbook.  The drawing was held at the gala evening meal and was won by Attila Biro of Comparex, so congratulations to him!
Overall it was another successful EBUG event and we look forward to next year’s, which we hear will be taking place in Germany.
XYPRO’s next few European events are a one day BITUG SIG on 19th May in London and a much larger Viking NonStop User Group (VNUG) annual meeting in Stockholm during the last week the month.  If you’re going to either, we look forward to saying hi and perhaps sharing a beer or two in the bar...

Dan Lewis
European Marketing Manager

Product Spotlight:SQLXPress

SQLXPress Can Help You Manage Your HP NonStop SQL Databases

In November, 2009, we announced our strategic partnership with Merlon. Since that time, we have really enjoyed educating our customers about the beneficial tools Merlon offers.

In today’s blog, we’d like to highlight a tool that provides comprehensive support for managing large, complex database environments.  The solution, SQLXPress,  is an essential companion product for SQL/MX and SQL/MP.

Simplify with SQLXPress
SQLXPress  supports all standard DDL operations, and offers several advanced features that are not available with the command line interface, such as compare data definition language (DDL), two-way object relationship browsing, multi-object commands and partition key data analysis.


SQLXPress offers benefits database administrators, software developers, quality assurance analysts and technical support staff. With SQLXPress, users can benefit from the following:


•         Simplified Database Administration

•         Improved Application Performance

•         Increased Productivity

•         Easy-to-use Modern Graphical User Interface

•         Simplified Data Browsing

•         Easy Statistics Management

To learn more about this sophisticated database management tool click here.

Or look for our upcoming webcasts that feature all of our database and security tools.

And the Winner is….

The winner of XYPRO’s Events survey drawing is:

Michael Crispyn, Vice President
Group Manager, Tandem Online Systems
Fifth Third Processing Solutions, LLC

Scott won the $100 Gift Card drawing for filling out our recent survey.

As promised, here are the results of XYPRO's Survey about which upcoming shows our customers/prospects will be attending.
75% of those who responded are going to the NonStop Summit in San Jose
25% of those who responded are going to HP Tech Forum - Las Vegas

Anastasia Valentine asked:    Lisa-how many in total responded?

Lisa Responded: 
48 people replied, about which show they or people from their company would be attending, speaking on behalf of about 60 individual attendees.

6 additional responders didn't say which show because they weren't sure yet.
3 said they no plans to attend either show.

We had several international "Yes" answers - which is also encouraging.

A couple of interesting comments in the "free form" field - 3 people said they weren't aware that the NonStop event in September was happening due to the lack of marketing,
but they were all aware that HPTF was happening.

So those percentages match up with Ernie Guerrera's poll of his customer base, if I recall correctly.

So if roughly 70-75% of those going to a show are coming to San Jose, we just have to make sure enough people know about the NonStop event to consider it. So please pass the word around!

Product Spotlight:Encryption PRO

Don’t Let this Be You!
As you’ve probably already heard, a hacker was able to break into the database of RockYou, which provides applications and services for social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. This hacker obtained 32 million clear-text passwords! For whatever reason, the passwords of RockYou’s customers were not encrypted and were an easy target. RockYou is now encrypting all passwords and reviewing their current data security features to ensure that they meet industry standards and best practices. Of course, they’re undoubtedly wishing they would have taken this approach 32 million passwords sooner.

Protect Passwords with Encryption PRO
XYGATE Encryption PRO provides encryption for just about any type of communications between computer systems. These components enable you to encrypt interactive sessions, transaction sessions, file transfer sessions and databases or fields. Using software-based mechanisms, XYGATE provides encryption for not only HP NonStop servers and PC workstations, but also Unix, IBM OS390 and Z/OS, and many more....

XYGATE Encryption is the ideal solution set for protecting data in transit. A variety of components provide privacy for many types of sessions:

• Between your HP NonStop servers,
• Between HP NonStop servers and your PC workstations
• Many other platforms.

Protecting the privacy of data at rest is achieved via encrypting files and databases. XYGATE makes it practical to encrypt files for online storage, entire databases, or just selected fields that contain sensitive information. Learn more at www.xypro.com

XYPRO Recognized for Outstanding Support with Two Awards

Thank you to everyone we visited at the recent SATUG. It was a pleasure to meet with all of you and we look forward to our future partnerships. We are honored to announce that XYPRO received two awards at the event.  The first was for Outstanding Support of SATUG and the second was presented to our regional representative, Morne Conradie. Morne received an individual recognition award for his Outstanding Contributions over the years. Thank you to everyone involved, as we continually strive to exceed your NonStop security, compliance and encryption needs.

See you in the SUN!
Please visit us at the Sunshine Summit in Tampa, Florida.

SUNTUG Conference- Friday, 19 March 2010 at Embassy Suites
Tampa - Airport/Westshore - 555 N. Westshore Blvd. - Tampa Florida 33609 -  813-875-1555

SATUG and DUST 2010

XYPRO is Gearing Up for SATUG!
The SATUG 2010 Summit & AGM will take place on the 9th and 10th March 2010, followed by a training session on the 11th. SATUG will take place at the Emerald Casino and Hotel Resort in Vanderbijlpark, South Africa, and XYPRO is gearing up for this wonderful event.  Along with gaining and sharing critical user group knowledge, attendees will have the opportunity to discover the newest solutions on the market!

Also, join XYPRO at the next DUST meeting - Tuesday 16 March!
The next DUST Meeting will be held on Tuesday, March 16th, at CVS Caremark in Scottsdale, AZ. The continental breakfast sponsored by XYPRO will start at 8:30 am with the meeting starting at 9:00 am. Lunch is sponsored by ACI Worldwide and will be brought in after the meeting. NTI will be giving an HP Mini again and there will be other door prizes.

The presentations are:
User Presentation from Wells Fargo on security. Chris Draper will be showing some of the things WFB does on the Tandem: user/HR processing, personnel info in the SAFEGUARD profile, separation of duties, etc. Mark Hammett is a contractor at Wells and will be discussing an alternative implementation of XYGATE Merged Audit and how it could be used to full advantage to achieve PCI compliance.

Jim Bowers of ACI Worldwide will present ACI and HP - 35 Years of NonStop.

Network Technologies International will do a short presentation on the latest with NTI and DRNet and their customer trends for 2010.

Please RSVP to Cathy (480-766-5440 or cathy.meurer@usfood.com) for both the meeting and lunch.