How to Prepare for a Retiring IBM i Workforce

When IBM i was introduced in 1985 (then known as AS400), it was the pinnacle of a robust and well-integrated hardware/software platform, handling everything from ERP and manufacturing systems to scanning and dispatching, all while requiring comparatively minimal maintenance. Nearly 40 years later, IBM i technicians who were at the forefront of the game when it was introduced are reaching the end of their careers, heading for retirement and leaving a gap in institutional product knowledge.

Luckily, companies like ERP Suites are ready to handle any managed services provider (MSP) outsourcing you might need. In this article, we’ll go over the advantages of outsourcing and how ERP Suites can fulfill your outsourcing needs.

Advantages of outsourcing your IBM i MSP

There are plenty of reasons why you could look to outsourcing your IBM i managed services. Perhaps as is occurring industry-wide, your company is affected by the attrition of IBM i -versed employees. You’re certainly aware of the stability the IBM i provides a business, thanks to its keen integration – and so you also know that hiring a full-time employee or multiple full-time employees isn’t as cost effective as you’d like. Because IBM i runs pretty seamlessly without requiring too much hand-holding, bringing in an MSP for a set number of hours can lower your staffing overhead while ensuring your company’s integrity stays consistent. Let’s take a closer look at some of the advantages of outsourcing your IBM i MSP.

Lower cost, continued

MSPs can host hundreds of IBM i partitions at lower costs than individual companies can manage. This is because they can allocate technicians more efficiently between the systems they host, and they have access to greater processing capacity than small companies can usually afford to license and maintain on their own.

The cost savings extend beyond the platform itself. There’s also the human resourcing aspect. Say your company has one dedicated IBM i technician who has a two-week vacation coming up. Instead of scrambling for coverage and being left with an uneasy feeling of insufficient preparation, companies can bring in their MSP for a once-a-year backfill coverage request. Or, say you don’t have any IBM i techs left on staff. You can utilize your MSP when and as it makes financial sense for you.

Focused expertise

Another key advantage of utilizing MSPs is the vast breadth and scope of expertise they can offer, on everything from current methods to security issues to hardware advances. Over our years of providing IBM i MSP, we’ve encountered a variety of needs from different customers.

We’ve worked through scenarios where IBM i technicians at smaller companies haven’t kept their skillsets current – a catch-22 of the long-lasting stability of the IBM i. Because the system requires much less care and feeding as most other systems, some technicians simply choose not to investigate options for improvement in the technology itself and in their own facility with the system.

As a result, they’re often unaware of advances in hardware capabilities, and lack essential support skills, such as:

• Knowing how replication works between systems
• How to perform saves and restores
• How to create immutable copies of data to safeguard against security threats, like ransomware attacks (with some IBM i techs being unaware this potential even exists.)

While the IBM i ’s reputation for stability is well-deserved, and present neglect might not pose significant risks in the short, in the long run, failing to upgrade and properly support the system will expose your company to lost efficiency and potentially open doors that hackers and other cyber criminals will be eager to exploit.

Needs-based approach

Another factor to keep in mind with using an MSP is that it helps your company maintain autonomy and control. There’s no forcing anyone out of a role and replacing them with the MSP. Instead, as the original IBM i workforce retires, ERP Suites is able to fill the gap in capacity, letting the customer retain freedom and flexibility when it comes to what you can do. You don’t have to suddenly deal with an emergency situation or a re-platforming issue just because of a human resources issue.

Extra set of eyes

It would be very difficult for a company who is accustomed to running their business on an IBM i to abruptly move off the IBM i after 10, 15, even 20 years, because it’s often so deeply embedded in their operation that untangling that enmeshment would take quite a while. That’s another way in which ERP Suites acting as the MSP can help – we can help companies understand the connections they have in their business operations, and how IBM i is being used throughout their organization. Sometimes it takes a third-party look under the hood to shine a light on how things are operating and how they could be more efficient and cost-effective.

We can do it all

IBM i remains a very relevant product, and it’s not going away anytime soon, even if its original tech workforce is retiring. A very large national aviation company recently performed an analysis of running SAP on IBM i, as compared to running it on Oracle and Sun and IBM mainframe. This analysis found that the integration of the database led to such high-cost savings that when the study was complete, the IBM i always came out ahead of any other option. And that was by and large because database admins were not required in the IBM i environment.

When you can outsource your already-minimal needs to a third-party MSP, you free up your bottom line to focus on other things. And you’re selecting an option that builds vigilance and vetting into its operations. Your MSPs are consultants who can advise and maintain, as part of the dedication to finding ways to improve practices. As part of our performance tuning, we’re constantly looking around to find any inefficiencies that can be refined. We give customers opportunities to make changes for the better. We’re always looking for ways to make sure our client is still going to be in business tomorrow.

Contact us to learn more

We’ve outlined how the original IBM i expert-level workforce is approaching retirement and leaving a gap in product knowledge that we’re more than poised to fill. If you’d like to learn more about utilizing ERP Suites as your IBM i MSP, on your terms, drop us a line. We’d love to speak with you.