How IBM AS400 Modernization Helps Businesses Enhance Customer Experience
How IBM AS400 Modernization Helps Businesses Enhance Customer Experience
In today’s competitive market, several organizations are actively transforming IT infrastructure including their AS400 systems. AS400 systems have been the pillar of performance for many organizations in many sectors for more than three decades. Being an IBM creation, these machines are being used for extensive application processing for data-driven sectors like Insurance, Banking, Manufacturing, Retail, etc.
What is IBM AS400?
IBM AS400 popularly known as IBM iSeries or IBM I is an integrated system featuring hardware, an operating system, and several core functions like an integrated database. When compared to ‘IBM z’ (IBM Mainframe), the AS400 system offers better scalability, robustness, security, reliability, and low cost of ownership. Though it is a reliable system, IBM i does have its fair share of drawbacks and challenges now.
Why AS400 Modernization is Essential for Businesses
Despite various benefits, a majority of enterprises are now progressively modernizing AS400 systems due to constant maintenance, talent dwindling, and other reasons. Another major reason for IBM i modernization is that the risk of hosting mission-critical applications and workloads on this hardware platform impacts business productivity at large. Therefore, IT leaders and organizations must opt for the AS400 cloud modernization approach.
Transitioning to a cloud ecosystem makes it easier for businesses to work towards fulfilling standard requirements quickly, concentrate on essential IT objectives, and organize their IT applications effectively. Organizations looking to effectively modernize their AS400 systems by migrating to the Cloud should hire an iSeries development services provider to formulate a customized migration approach.
Key Modernization Steps Followed by iSeries Service Providers
- Requirements Evaluation– At first, modernization experts analyze the existing AS400 system, the business model it supports, and understand the demands for migration. Accordingly, the experts devise a clear business case for each AS400 workload to be migrated within the cloud.
- Risk Assessment – A detailed procedure of system assessment helps migration experts gain a better understanding of the vulnerabilities in the present AS400 system, discuss the risks, map out priorities, and areas to perform major modifications.
- Strategy Conception– Once the evaluation part is completed, the experts organizing the modernization project team up with the in-house IT authorities to decipher the best migration plans and achieve the pre-defined objectives.
- Implementation – In this phase, all the planning and organizing efforts come to reality. This phase includes a number of sections like the conception of programming, documentation, end-to-end testing, and many others.
- Support and Maintenance – Understanding requirements for implementation is considered the initial stage of the AS400 modernization project. It is after the implementation that the extensive phase two (“Support & Maintenance”) begins. The modernization team delivers real-time support and takes care of data security and compliance.
Benefits of AS400 Cloud Modernization
1.Embrace Innovative Technologies
One of the major benefits of IBM i application modernization is that businesses can gain access to experience cutting-edge Cloud capabilities. Transferring applications or workloads from iSeries servers to the Cloud platform enables users to experience self-support provisioning, advanced scalability, storage on-demand, reduced latency, and others. Moreover, AS400 cloud modernization helps the workforce to efficiently exploit innovative technologies like Predictive analysis, IoT, and Artificial Intelligence to optimize project outcomes and user experience.
2.GUI Transformation
IT leaders and organizations no longer need to work in the green screen interfaces to scale up their business requirements and potential. Cloud migration helps enterprises include new user experiences, workflows, and functionalities. This leads to controllable operation.
3.Alleviates Operational Costs
It is clear that iSeries systems are largely preferred by leading business sectors for facilitating large-scale transactions. However, due to its non-integrative nature and lack of self-management features, IBM i systems bring about higher maintenance costs. Therefore, large-scale companies can team up with the right AS400 support services provider to perform cloud migration and drastically reduce infrastructure expenses. Likewise, smaller businesses can also gain access to comprehensive services at a reasonable cost which would have been impossible with the iSeries systems.
4.Cloud-Driven Insights
Another significant advantage of migrating to a Cloud ecosystem is that it provides organizations with robust analytical and reporting abilities that can help professionals, CTOs, CIOs, and decision-makers in delivering insights. In the era of the digital workplace, the hybrid models of work continue to expand. Therefore, organizations should experience cloud-driven information insights to gain a competitive edge in the market.
5.Reduces Threats
The scalability offered by Cloud platforms is an apparent benefit. Be it a small-scale enterprise or a leading establishment, companies can rapidly scale up or down their process with the AS400 cloud migration. This scalability also assures that IT teams can formulate and resolutely perform their migration with reliance. Besides, AS400 migration to a Cloud platform will provide better business continuity and eliminate the possibilities of on-site installation concerns, Ransomware attacks, weather conditions happenings, etc. Hence, cloud migration has been considered an effective AS400 modernization approach that delivers better business resilience.
6.Smart Execution
As mentioned before, operating with the retiring AS400 systems is becoming hard for SMEs and RPG technologists. Since IBM AS400 is perceived as outdated technology, it necessitates more robust and skilled developers to provide 100% uptime. Migrating to a Cloud ecosystem with the support of an experienced AS400 technical support team helps organizations leverage the digital workplace and supports business growth. Furthermore, companies adopting Cloud can accelerate self-reliance among IT teams and gain solid experience.
Wrapping Up
Overall, migrating to a cloud environment helps organizations enhance application scalability and user-friendliness while eliminating AS400 systems’ hardware setup burden. With AS400 Cloud modernization, businesses can have the capability to keep up with the evolving security standards and effectively combat vulnerabilities.
