Why AS400 Cloud Migration is Essential for Modern Enterprises
One of the key trends that enterprises are largely adopting is digitization. Adopting digital initiatives help organizations to stay competitive. Enterprises that work with monolithic legacy platforms like AS400 are failing to obtain the scalability and agility that are essential in the competitive market. It’s primarily because the AS400 ecosystem is complex in nature and it is supported by a combination of outdated operating systems and databases.
This is where Cloud migration comes in. Migration of mission-critical workloads and applications from the AS400 ecosystem to the Cloud platform enables organizations to streamline workflows, digitize processes, and offset risks. In simple, AS400 migration to Cloud allows organizations to save more resources and pay attention to core competencies.
Introduction to IBM AS400
IBM AS400 interchangeably called ‘IBM iSeries or ‘IBM i’ is an integrated system launched back in 1988 to build and host business applications and workloads securely. AS400 systems comprise an exclusive operating system, hardware, and other entities like a shared database.
AS400 is considered one of the most robust Power systems designed by IBM since it offers greater security, reliability, and minimal cost of ownership. Though it is a decade-old system, it has its own share of challenges and disadvantages like non-compatibility, expensive maintenance, lack of talent support, and many others.
Importance of AS400 Cloud Migration
By running enterprise apps on IBM AS400 Systems, enterprises can’t scale their applications to meet modern business requirements. However, through the lift and shift Cloud migration approach, enterprises can transfer their enterprise app from AS400 to the Cloud with minimal or no codebase changes. This way, organizations can experience better scalability and flexibility.
Cloud platforms like Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS make it possible by providing enterprises the ability to create, organize, and integrate applications on an enterprise-level network. This eventually reduces dependency on multifaceted hardware or data centers and helps enterprises overcome costly maintenance practices. Overall, organizations can focus on significant IT goals, scale resources appropriately, and meet both technical and non-technical needs rapidly.
Factors to Consider Before AS400 Cloud Migration
Organizations should hire skilled migration experts to implement smooth transitions and drive productivity. Experts from the right AS400 migration services provider can help strategize the transformation journey through the following stages:
- Configuration Analysis– At first, migration experts assess the current AS400 System’s configuration and determine whether it can be transitioned as-is or whether needs to make configuration changes to support the Cloud ecosystem.
- Dependency Identification – Once evaluated configuration details, the experts can start identifying the dependencies existing between legacy applications and core infrastructure. By accurately plotting all the active dependencies, the experts can prioritize workloads and applications for Cloud migration.
- Security Valuation – AS400 experts using the appropriate testing tools identify threats related to data by categorizing the potential susceptibilities and weaknesses. This approach helps experts to discover the errors and take necessary security measures to resolve them prior to migration.
Benefits of AS400 Cloud Migration
1.Reduces Hardware Maintenance
As stated before, enterprises that are still using AS400 legacy systems need to purchase and deploy additional hardware for enabling extensions and upgrades. On the other hand, by migrating AS400 workloads to the Cloud, organizations can shift from CapEx to the OpEx model, and lessen their TCO. Cloud migration makes it easier for organizations to organize application data and ensure greater business continuity. Apart from installation challenges, AS400 Cloud migration helps organizations pay for prerequisite setup and minimize overstocking of resources.
2.Improve Application Performance
Another important benefit of AS400 Cloud migration is that organizations can get access to a range of functionalities offered by Cloud providers. Transferring applications from IBM AS400 servers to the Cloud platform allows enterprises to experience advanced scalability and self-resource provisioning eliminates inactivity, and much more. In addition, AS400 Cloud migration helps business users easily leverage innovative technologies like Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Analytics, and ML to improve application capabilities, user experience, and performance. With robust analytics and reporting features, decision-makers and administrative users can get insights into application performance.
3.Enhance App Compatibility
By using AS400 systems for enterprise app hosting, organizations can’t integrate their app with other data sources and operating systems. However, the availability of connectors in the Cloud platforms provides better scope for enterprises to implement integrations and synchronization. With AS400 Cloud migration, organizations can take advantage of the Cloud platform’s (AWS and Azure) library connectors and build fully-functional workflows that work at a better speed. This helps enterprises to improve app user experience. With such benefits, organizations can easily fulfill business and IT objectives and gain a competitive edge.
4.Strengthen Security
In a recent survey, 91% of business CTOs and IT decision-makers stated that legacy AS400 Systems make mission-critical apps vulnerable to security threats. Obsolete legacy Systems like AS400 are discordant with the latest security standards. Hence, migrating AS400 Systems can effectively eliminate security threats and secure app data consistently. With advanced transparency and control offered by the Cloud platform, enterprises can rapidly apply and strengthen their app security as per modern standards.
Summing Up
IBM AS400 Cloud migration helps enterprises boost their app’s accessibility and flexibility while reducing multifaceted hardware installation and challenges. With the Cloud migration method, enterprises can also have the ability to evolve through digitization.
