The Inovis Blog

Gwyn Madsen has written another blog for your reading pleasure.  Enjoy!

Over the many years I’ve worked on the IBM midrange platform known as AS/400, iSeries, System i, Power system, blah, blah, blah.I have found it to be both a blessing and a curse. For those who know what one of these amazing machines can do, it’s obvious why there is such a following for this platform. However, for those who stare blankly when I explain what I do for a living, I’m often dismissed as ‘working on an old, legacy, ancient, dead or dying platform,’ or worse—a platform no one has ever heard of!

It’s a bit of an uphill battle for many companies to express the value seen in the IBM i platform too; if not from the sheer confusion in the name. IBM has done no favors for the loyal customer base by changing the platform name every couple of years. There are dozens of flavors of UNIX and Windows around but somehow a supermarket checker has heard of these platforms but not of the trusted System i that is the powerhouse running the grocer’s entire business.

Image Source: http://www-03.ibm.com

I’ve been blessed to work in the amazing and ever changing System i environment for more than a decade and have seen firsthand how versatile and robust this platform is. I regularly work with customers whose businesses hinge on the performance of the IBM System i. These companies trust the platform to manage critical business applications like EDI & order entry systems which are the center for managing business. Inovis has a tried and true EDI product offering on the System i platform and has serviced this market for over 20 years as Premenos, Harbinger, Peregrine and now Inovis. The TrustedLink System i application is well known for its ease of use, seasoned support staff and superior product function but none of this matters without the phenomenal stability and scalability of the System i.

So when the next acquisition or consolidation project rolls through the IT department, make sure to include some of those intangible items as part of the ROI discussion. Ease of use for a staple business application like an EDI translator means you don’t need a team of people dedicated to mapping and monitoring operations. Stability of a platform means fewer midnight calls with the Senior Executive team trying to understand how or why a critical system failed. We may still get blank stares when we talk about our AS400’s, but take the extra time to explain some of the benefits of the system before you are dismissed as working on an ‘old, legacy, ancient, dead or dying’ platform.  I, for one, love the 400, System i, iSeries, or Power whatever blah, blah, blah that IBM calls it next.