How iSeries Cloud Modernization Helps Businesses Future-Proof Operations
At present, the digital transformation trend is increasingly gaining traction in several sectors and it helps organizations to remain more competitive. Enterprises that deal with monolithic legacy systems like IBM AS400 have failed to experience the agility and flexibility that are essential in the competitive digital ecosystem. It’s because AS400 systems are complex and driven by a combination of obsolete operating systems and databases.
This is where AS400 Cloud modernization comes in! By migrating applications and workloads from AS400 systems to the Cloud platform, businesses can speed up processes, simplify workflows, and eliminate risks, thus freeing up resources and time to focus on core competencies. Experts from the right AS400 support service provider can help businesses with effective modernization and drive efficiency.
Introduction to IBM AS400
IBM AS400 typically known as ‘IBM i or ‘IBM iSeries’ is an integrated system that offers an operating system, hardware, and various core services like a combined database. When compared to other mainframe systems offered by IBM, the AS400 system offers better security, robustness, reliability, and minimal cost of ownership. Though it is considered a reliable system, AS400 systems have their fair share of drawbacks and challenges.
Why Modernize IBM AS400 Systems
By using iSeries systems, organizations can’t experience the needed agility and flexibility to address vital business requirements and gain growth opportunities. Whereas, migrating to Cloud enables businesses to establish an infrastructure with greater scalability and flexibility. Cloud platforms like Azure make it possible by providing enterprises an opportunity to develop, organize, and deploy applications on a global, cost-effective, and enterprise-level network. This eventually reduces dependency on complex hardware or data centers and helps businesses to overcome costly maintenance practices. On the whole, organizations can focus on crucial IT goals, scale resources appropriately, and meet both technical/non-technical requirements quickly.
Key Pre-Migration Practices Followed by AS400 Support Experts
- Analyzing Configurations – Initially, AS400 modernization experts analyze the present iSeries System’s configuration and determine whether it can be transferred as-is or whether needs to make configuration modifications to support the new Cloud environment.
- Identifying Server Dependencies – Once analyzed configuration information, the experts can start mapping the dependencies between legacy applications and core infrastructure. By accurately finding all the existing dependencies, the experts can prioritize workloads and applications for Cloud migration.
- Security Assessment – In this phase, experts using the right testing tools identify threats related to data by categorizing the potential susceptibilities and weaknesses. This approach helps AS400 experts to prioritize the flaws and deploy adequate security measures to eliminate them before migration.
Benefits of Cloud-Based AS400 Modernization
- Enhanced Business Continuity
In general, businesses that run AS400 legacy systems have to purchase more equipment for implementing upgrades and expansion. Whereas, migrating AS400 workloads to Cloud helps businesses reduce the TCO, making it less expensive for organizations to manage data and ensure greater business continuity. Apart from additional installation problems, Cloud-based modernization helps businesses to pay for required setup and eliminate overprovisioning of resources.
- Alleviated Operational Costs
It is obvious that iSeries legacy systems are predominantly used by leading business enterprises to conduct large-scale data transactions. Yet, due to its lack of non-integrative and self-administration nature, iSeries systems result in higher maintenance costs for organizations. Therefore, to overcome this concern, large-scale enterprises should partner with the right IBM iSeries support team. The support experts can perform seamless cloud migration and considerably reduce business’ infrastructure costs.
- Implement Multiple Integrations
With Cloud-based AS400 modernization, organizations can get accessibility to Cloud provider’s (AWS and Azure) library connectors and build fully-functional workflows that work at greater speed. This helps businesses to harness the digital workplace ecosystem. Generally, in the iSeries systems, enabling integrations with data sources and organizational applications is a major problem. However, the availability of connectors in the Cloud platforms provides better scope for organizations to do synchronization and integrations. With such benefits, organizations can easily fulfill present and future objectives and gain a competitive edge.
- Improved Security
In a recent report, 88% of IT decision-makers and business leaders mentioned that legacy systems make organizations more vulnerable to security threats. This is mainly because outdated legacy systems are incompatible with present security standards and authentication techniques. Therefore, modernizing legacy systems can incredibly eliminate security vulnerabilities and protect business data effectively. With better visibility and control offered by the Cloud environment, businesses can apply and modify their security practices as per the evolving standards.
- Access to Modern Technologies
Another foremost benefit of AS400 modernization is that organizations can gain access to advanced Cloud capabilities. Migrating workloads or applications from IBM i servers to the Cloud platform allows enterprises to experience greater scalability, self-support provisioning, reduced latency, and much more. Moreover, AS400 cloud modernization helps business users effectively leverage modern technologies like Artificial Intelligence, IoT, and analytics to improve application capabilities, user experience, and outcomes. With strong analytical and reporting functionalities, CIOs, CTOs, and other decision-makers can acquire insights related to application performance.
Wrapping Up
The iSeries cloud modernization approach helps organizations enhance their app’s scalability and user-friendliness while removing complex hardware setup and challenges. With this modernization approach, organizations can also have the ability to evolve with ever-changing requirements, and security principles and effectively combat risks.
