System i on demand
Jonathan Ball
services? I received some unsolicited e-mail from a company, Blue Hill
Data (http://bluehilldata.com/), and they offer an iSeries on-demand
service. That's not of much interest to my regular full-time employer,
but a small company I still support on the side might be interested, as
they have a small and aging AS/400 model 170 that is used in a
significant part of their business, but they've never wanted to spend
the money to get up on something newer. I'd like to know of other firms
that compete with Blue Hill Data. I found a few that look similar:
* Connectria (http://www.connectria.com/as400_hosting.asp)
* First National (http://www.fnts.com/iseriesMgt.php)
* Invision
(http://invision.com/products/managed-hosting/ibm-as400-iseries-systemi-hosting.aspx)
Wondering if anyone knows of others, and/or if you've had any dealings
with any of these four specifically on the issue of hosted iSeries
solutions. I also came across other "timeshare" services, but these
seem to be more oriented toward developers and consultants who want to
have access to a development environment and sandbox without having to
acquire their own machine.
JTF
> Has anyone dealt with any vendors providing System i "on demand"
> services? I received some unsolicited e-mail from a company, Blue Hill
> Data (http://bluehilldata.com/), and they offer an iSeries on-demand
> service. That's not of much interest to my regular full-time employer,
> but a small company I still support on the side might be interested, as
> they have a small and aging AS/400 model 170 that is used in a
> significant part of their business, but they've never wanted to spend
> the money to get up on something newer. I'd like to know of other firms
> that compete with Blue Hill Data. I found a few that look similar:
>
> * Connectria (http://www.connectria.com/as400_hosting.asp)
> * First National (http://www.fnts.com/iseriesMgt.php)
> * Invision
>
> Wondering if anyone knows of others, and/or if you've had any dealings
> with any of these four specifically on the issue of hosted iSeries
> solutions. I also came across other "timeshare" services, but these
> seem to be more oriented toward developers and consultants who want to
> have access to a development environment and sandbox without having to
> acquire their own machine.
I would keep an iSeries on site due to connectivity problems that may
arise. The remote site could be a hot failover to the onsite
computer, but not as the primary in my opinion.
Connectivity:
**One thing to keep in mind would be internet availability. If the
connection has been reliable, I would still put in a secondary/fail
over network like a cable modem to take traffic if the main connection
has failed......
**Will the network speed be affected by many workstations accessing
one host over the internet, while the old system may be old and slow,
you may find similar speeds due to your network access speeds slowing
reactivity to familiar levels.
**What IF the internet is down with no failover, does/can business
stop for an unknown period of time? What is the cost of business
stoppage if the iSeries at the remote site (either your connectivity
or theirs) is unavailable?
Jonathan Ball
Those are all good questions to consider, but based on the business
environment of my current full-time employer, I don't think there is
much risk of interruption of service for this other company simply due
to having the physical server located elsewhere. My employer has its
primary iSeries server at its headquarters in California, and there are
hardly any users left there; most of their operations - and the system
users - have been moved elsewhere, to other countries and continents or
to other parts of the United States. My employer has a private network,
but that's outsourced. In reality, this small client I have left over
from my consulting days would not be at any significantly higher risk of
service interruption using a hosted server solution, than the remote
parts of my employer's operations are.
This client is an insurance third-party administrator, and among their
clients is a large company that provides a network connection to the
large company's systems; my client, the TPA, manages the insurance
claims through their connection to their client's systems. They have
the model 170 to administer the claims for a different client. If they
ditched their own server and used an outsourced hosted server, it would
simply make the processing for their two clients more similar.
The client is a successful but relatively small sole proprietorship, and
the owner is a tightwad and somewhat of a technophobe. To give an
indication, when I first began working with them in 1998, any time
someone addressed the "need" for robust computer systems, he was fond of
taking out a pencil that was parked over one ear, and (somewhat
pompously) announcing, after a pregnant pause, "THIS...is the only
computer system _I_ need!" He probably spent between $25K and $30K
acquiring and installing the model 170 back then, not counting
customization fees paid to me, and since then he has balked at spending
what might once have been $30K or more to replace that system. I
believe they have IBM hardware maintenance on the machine, and that has
to be costing them a substantial amount - probably more than they would
pay per month for a hosted server solution.
Dave
each site working well together. But we would like to not only
consolidate but also move to a hosted environment. I would be
interested in any company with a track record of offering hosted AS400
access as well as virtual desktop access.
Jonathan Ball
I'm waiting to hear back from my client authorizing me to make inquiries
on their behalf to the four companies I found. I'll post the general
results I get from them, assuming the client does authorize me to speak
with the vendors.
I think this idea makes a lot of sense, particularly for smaller
companies. There may always be a niche for small companies hosting
their own small servers, but I think that niche is going to decline.
There are definitely economies of scale to data center and server
consolidation, especially regarding the human element.
BTW, the address I posted for the Invision iSeries hosting company got
munged. It's this:
http://invision.com/products/managed-hosting/ibm-as400-iseries-systemi-hosting.aspx
Here's a shortened version of it in case that gets munged, too:
iseriesflorida
This seems to be the same item that has been discussed for several
years, run a business with your own IT expertise, outsource, remote
host it, etc. What is the bottom line to all of this usually is
costs. Supporting systems that do not have support contracts with IBM
is hard indeed. In regards to Dave(s) write up. What would your
business model look like if you did consolidate onto 1 machine VS the
12 boxes?? Would you save money, users be happy, etc, etc.
Jonathan Ball
User happiness depends mostly on the applications, not on who owns the
server or where it sits.
It's pretty obvious that at least /some/ firms must believe the server
hosting option to be advantageous in terms of cost, or they wouldn't be
doing it. Whether it really turns out to be better is another matter.
I suspect in Dave's company's case, consolidating the servers probably
is a good idea - even if they consolidate them onto one big machine they
continue to manage themselves. Network capacity is almost certainly
cheaper than running and maintaining multiple geographically scattered
servers.