The AS/400’s (IBM Power) reputation for reliability and robustness can lead some companies that own them to neglect their daily monitoring and maintenance.

The management of Power servers is often left to network administrators and IT managers, due to lack of qualified resources and resources in general.

Does this resonate an alarm in your head?

Such a comprehensive tool as the AS/400 is worth its weight in gold. By performing daily maintenance, you protect your investment, your data, and more importantly, your operations. The problem is that the AS/400 is a complex server that very few people have the comprehensive training for. Therefore, specialized and highly skilled human resources are scarce, they are closer to the end of their career than the beginning and are particularly expensive. We can really talk about scarcity for these profile specialists.

In this context, it is increasingly difficult for companies to have these resources internally, especially for SMEs. However, the latter has advantageous solutions: opt for managed services for their power infrastructure. That is to outsource the administration of your environment to experts who ensure smooth operations.

The seven advantages of using managed services for IBM Power servers:

1. Affordable expertise

The experts in AS/400 servers are becoming increasingly rare and their remuneration reflects well, the law of supply and demand. In fact, their salaries can represent up to twice that of a network administrator. Managed services are therefore reflected in substantial wage savings for the company.

2. Monitoring 24/7

Even if you hire a person responsible for administering your Power server, it is unlikely that the latter is available around the clock seven days a week. With a partner, you get this constant monitoring which relays alerts the minute a problem occurs.

3. Support for Daily test

Although Power servers are autonomous and require little maintenance, certain actions must be taken on a daily basis to ensure proper functioning and good condition of your IT infrastructure. Managed services operate these remote controls daily, without burdening your IT staff and has no impact on production.

4. Anticipation of problems

The AS/400 servers have long been considered impervious to computer attacks. Today, although attacks are not yet common, the dam is not as tight as before and viruses can now reach your data.

With a team of experts who know the attacks and receive alerts quickly, they can, in most cases, defuse a crisis before it happens

5. Increased productivity

By opting for managed services, you reduce the likelihood of interrupting your production and employees who cannot work due to a failure. This guarantees that every morning, your team comes to work with a functional system.

6. Systematic verification and integrity of backups

Verifying the integrity of backups is a long and tedious process and sometimes not a priority for your IT department often struggling with more urgent requests. Managed services support this tedious but essential task, and ensure that your backup systems are operational at all times.

7. Detailed monthly reports

Finally, in addition to issuing warnings and to act quickly in an emergency, the experts who manage your Power servers evaluate and analyze your IT infrastructure every month. So you receive a monthly report with the problems observed during the month, in addition to expert recommendations. In other words, you can take a more proactive than reactive attitude.

Each time, we must intervene due to an incident that has occurred in the IT infrastructure, leaders are often powerless and say ", I knew that we were running a risk? Why did I not do something prior”? Nobody likes to be in this situation, especially when the solutions are known.

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