Thoroughly Modern: How To Optimize IT In 2023

January 16, 2023 Jeff Swartz

It should be no surprise to anyone that applications running on IBM i are business critical. In many cases, these crucial systems keep the business alive day-to-day. Working with organizations around the globe, we are seeing a lot of activity happening in the IBM i space to optimize operations and put in new workload models. Many IT organizations are looking at upgrading. This includes implementing tech refreshes and moving to Power10 systems.

Now is the time really to think about what the ideal model is for where to run which applications.

Historically, when companies looked at infrastructure upgrades, they would examine how the business was growing and project what are their processing and storage capacity needs would be for the next three to five years to get their next box. Nowadays, the world is much more complex and there are many more options available. Just because you have run on-premise systems for decades, for instance, doesn’t mean you necessarily have to do that anymore. Your company ran on-premise systems because that was the only option. But running hardware is likely not core to what your business does every day, even if the applications are.

To get everything done in the IT organization, it’s important to question everything you are doing in your datacenter. Are you an expert at security and managing the ever-evolving world of cybersecurity? Are you affected by compliance and regulatory requirements? Are your systems and environments set up to comply with them? Do you need to support more remote employees than you did pre-pandemic? Does your infrastructure design make sense in terms of where your servers are and the access to them?

As 2023 is beginning, now is the time for companies to re-evaluate the applications that they run and where they run them. So you should ask some basic questions such as:

Do you need to have separate Dev/Test, UAT, production, and disaster recovery environments?
Is that even on your radar?
Do you need scalability on demand?
Do you have personnel who are potentially retiring soon?
Will you have the resources to manage the infrastructure and its applications and keep the machine up-to-date?

Friends Don’t Let Friends Buy Hardware

We don’t mean any offense by that. We love hardware, and particularly IBM Power Systems. But in 2023, we want everyone to hit the pause button and consider their options. As many IBM i shops are looking to upgrade to Power9 or Power10 systems (and the consequent IBM i Technology Refreshes), this is a great time to consider how cloud computing and add-on managed services can bring value to your organization.

Why do organizations move to the cloud, and specifically on IBM i? Access to IBM skills is a key reason. As we all know, the platform has been around for a long time – three and a half decades in its current incarnation since the AS/400 launched in 1988. Many of our customers have a retiring IBM i workforce and there aren’t a lot of young up-and-comers who are learning the IBM i platform. Our business is actually growing exponentially because Fresche is cultivating a young workforce with expertise in IBM i and modern technologies. We combine that with some of the most experienced people in the IBM i market and allow our customers to buy a slice of their time.

Managed services free up internal resources. Most IBM i shops have people who are caring for the system day-to-day. In many cases, they have no choice but to let someone take over that menial work so they can focus on the core applications and databases that will run and expand the business.

Both cloud computing and managed services offer flexibility and utility pricing. When you are buying on-premise hardware or hiring a new employee – or better still, finding a qualified employee – you are buying capacity that you think you will need in the future. For hardware, you have to overspend because you don’t know what the growth looks like. Same with personnel. You have to overprovision your people so the mundane system management tasks can be done alongside critical application and database development.

When you’re running in the cloud and using managed services to support your systems and applications, you only buy what you use. If you grow, we grow with you. If you shrink, we can shrink with you until you start growing again.

When you move to the Fresche Cloud, we take over mundane tasks and get you out running the system day-to-day. We also get you out of the hardware and software refresh grief every three or four years. We are constantly refreshing our cloud, giving you the latest and greatest hardware IBM has to offer. And if you need to hang back for some reason, we can do that.

We can also set up Test/Dev environments, quality assurance environments, HA/DR systems, or do backups and archives. Whatever you need, we’ve got you covered.

The Critical Shift From CapEx To OpEx

Shifting a lot of IT from the capital expenses budget to the operational budget is another reason customers should consider cloud computing in 2023. When buying hardware and systems software licenses, you need the money upfront. With the cloud, you know what your monthly spend is and you know that cost is going to be steady for you. This means that you won’t have any unexpected surprises that you’ll have to take to the budget committee to get approved.

Moreover, with escalating lease rates, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to bring in a new system via lease. There isn’t a lot of equity that a leasing company is going to put into an IBM i system, which means that there are not going to be a lot of operating leases available out there. What you’re really looking at is a capital lease, which most CFOs want to stay away from.

We have IBM i and financial experts, so we buy systems efficiently. We buy the right systems to virtualize our customers – maximizing the value for them. As a result, we’re able to pass along our knowledge and expertise in buying along to our customers so they can save on the cloud.

When you move your production environment, you’ll need to crawl, then walk, then run to get to the cloud. Not every customer is going to be a candidate for the cloud, but every customer is going to be a candidate for us to have a conversation about managed services.

We have on-premise and hybrid models in case you’re not ready to go full cloud. For instance, we can do a hybrid cloud where you’re doing DR in the cloud, or you’re doing backups local and offsite, while keeping production on-premise until you’re ready to go full cloud. We have a customer that started off with backup in the cloud, then disaster recovery, and they were still on-premise for a while. Now they’re ready to come to the cloud. They feel comfortable with it because they know what it is and how it works.

What customers need to consider in 2023 is the Responsibility Matrix – where they are today and where they want to get to this year and the years after that.

If you are on-premise today, you are responsible for everything: the applications, operations management, network, connectivity, backups, hardware and firmware, and so on. Once you start to move into the cloud, you have an MSP option where we can put Fresche-owned hardware on site at your location and we can manage it, complete the backups on premise, and have DR in the cloud. Then you can see with the hybrid option that I talked about earlier, Fresche can start to take over more responsibilities and share some of them with the on-premise solutions that you still have.

Once you go all cloud, we’ve got you covered from top to bottom. You don’t have to worry about managing hardware. You focus on your business and its applications, which is where the focus of the IT department should be. You’re running business-critical applications on these systems, which is of the utmost priority to the company. You want them in the hands of experts that do this all day every day.

I recently hosted a round table session called Let’s Talk IBM i Cloud: How To Optimize IT In 2023 with a group of my colleagues at Fresche. You can watch it at this link.

Before you start your next tech refresh, reach out and we’ll help you understand your options and build your optimal IT plan for 2023. You can get in touch with me at Jeff.Swartz@freschesolutions.com,

Jeff Swartz is vice president of Cloud and Managed Services at Fresche Solutions. Jeff is dedicated to creating value for customers and partners. For over 30 years, he has excelled as a leader in IBM hardware, third-party leasing, security and software sales – always with the customer’s needs, goals and best interests in mind.

This content is sponsored by Fresche Solutions.

This Issue Sponsored By

Table of Contents

Content archive

Recent Posts

Subscribe

Pages

Search