The advantage of AS400
As the hardware and software of the AS400 system were integrated, two major advantages emerged. Firstly, it was possible to expand and adapt customisation without incurring licence fees or infrastructure changes. This made changes to ‘mission critical’ applications predictable and beneficial. In addition, the all-in-one AS400 platform was (and still is!) extremely stable and reliable. Ideal for complex mission-critical processes.
The downside of IBM only
The downside of the success of an IBM-only system, is that with the advent of open and cheaper hardware-independent software, the number of people able to manage an AS400 system has declined rapidly. This was 35 years ago, so many administrators have now retired, and AS400 has not been part of the curriculum of IT courses for a (very) long time. Another related disadvantage, is that the application on an AS400 is often so organisation-specific that it is difficult to migrate it to the cloud. As a result, many AS400 systems still run on-premises, including the (now famous) backup tape next to it.
AS400 management in the cloud
To ensure the continuity of the AS400 systems and the organisation, ready knowledge of AS400 systems and the (Power) cloud is required. After all, automated business processes cannot ‘just’ be set up in another cloud platform. We can help you with both your local AS400 system and the migration of your AS400 system to the cloud. We have been an AS400 specialist since the 1990s and have built up an IBM Powercloud platform, with which we still have hundreds of AS400 systems active.
3 steps to the IBM Powercloud
In recent years, we have helped many organisations migrate their AS400 systems to the cloud. Migrating to the cloud follows roughly the same steps as upgrading to a new Power system, and is done by taking 3 easy steps:
– The backup tape is read into our Powercloud platform;
– The hardware ID (key) is converted, which lands the application on our platform;
– The application and processes are tested from our platform (via VPN).
Not if but when
Eventually there will come a time when you will need to phase out the AS400 system. his is driven not only by a lack of (system) knowledge but too, because there are apps and applications running around the AS400 system that do go to the cloud. Migrating your AS400 system to our Powercloud, is a good intermediate step in this process. We can unlock your application securely and at high speed to various cloud providers and link via VPN to customer specific environments, Azure ExpressRoute and AWS DirectConnect.
By moving to our Powercloud, you are taking a step in advance toward the eventual phase-out. It allows you to continue migrating to the cloud, without your organisation being “held up” by the AS400 system. You also avoid unnecessary time pressure on a business-critical system that is now running on-premises. Finally, you secure the security and compliance of an important system, because we can help you optimise security, availability (High Availability), monitoring (24/7 SLA) and operational assurance.
Contact one of our solution architects to discuss the possibilities of migrating your AS400 system to our Powercloud.