But an inevitable challenge always arises with any mature technology: Do you have the right skill sets to support it? Today’s college graduates have not learned about sunset technologies, and when the person who maintains your older systems decides to leave or retire, what can your organization do? Many companies will try to replace that individual, but finding those skills can be challenging, they often choose to outsource the management of the existing environment to certified technical experts or move to an iSeries/AS/400 AIX cloud environment.
During a recent client engagement, OnX had an opportunity to assess an iSeries environment experiencing performance issues. In the discovery phase, we identified that the client did not have a recovery plan, and restoring the environment from backup would take 30 days. Can you imagine how a month of downtime of your iSeries systems would affect your business? It’s not that the client was neglectful of their systems, they just didn’t have the bandwidth to develop a viable recovery plan.
In this case, the client decided the best approach was for OnX to take over ongoing support of their existing environment through our remote monitoring and management practice. From there, we developed a secondary DR environment leveraging MIMIX replication software that is fully managed and tested extensively to prove a successful recovery outcome.
Finally, the assessment uncovered systems within their aging environment that were degrading performance and slowing the company’s operations. Because they did not want to invest in modern infrastructure to replace these end-of-life systems, the company decided to move workloads offsite into a compatible iSeries/pSeries cloud-based environment. For this company, shifting infrastructure costs from a capital expense to an operating expense allows for predictability in their expenditures for complete end-to-end systems management. It means they’re able to stay on the same stable platform without having to add headcount, and they gain access to the required skill sets as an extension of their team.
Global Aerospace Supplier Taps OnX to Launch a Robust Disaster Recovery Plan While Diagnosing Issues and Upgrading Core Infrastructure
If you are running into similar performance issues with legacy iSeries/pSeries/AS/400 systems and would benefit from an in-depth discussion about possibilities for updating and maintaining them, let us know. We have helped clients in finance, healthcare, telco, manufacturing, and retail find the right solutions for their particular requirements, and have uncovered ways to mitigate risks, like the DR example above, as part of the process.