In a recent survey, 44 percent of business leaders referenced having difficulty finding and retaining qualified IBM Power Systems professionals. That’s not a surprise. IBM Power Systems have been around for more than 30 years. Many colleges and universities have cut their power systems curriculum in favor of newer platforms. Additionally, salaries for IBM system administrators currently run about eight percent below the national average for similar roles on other platforms. This means that up-and-coming IT talent is probably not going to be interested in that open position you have.

But that doesn’t mean you need to ditch your IBM Power Systems infrastructure. A qualified managed service provider (MSP) can help you fill the gaps in your in-house IBM Power Systems skills, so you can keep using the powerful platform for your mission-critical applications.

11 signs it may be time to turn to a qualified MSP

1. Your IBM i go-to resource in IT has just left or is about to retire, and a sense of panic is setting in.
2. Your security expert got recruited by another company. (The job market for IT security professionals is hot!)
3. Your industry is stepping up compliance audits, and hefty fines are common.
4. You haven’t performed your own security and compliance risk assessment for a year or more.
5. Recent downtime or a “close call” during storm season has you revisiting your outdated business continuity and disaster recovery plan.
6. You haven’t tested your backups or disaster recovery failover procedures, so you aren’t 100 percent sure they’ll perform as required should you need them.
7. Your company just went through a merger, acquisition, or consolidation, and you’ve inherited unfamiliar IBM systems.
8. You need to get ready for a pending merger, acquisition, or consolidation by paring back internal staffing.
9. In an effort to reduce costs, you’d like to divest your data center and get rid of the high cost of maintaining the hardware you own.
10. You need more flexibility to adjust to seasonal or fluctuating workloads.
11. You’re so busy maintaining your systems your IT team hasn’t had time to launch a truly innovative initiative in years.

Your systems or ours?

Having a hard time finding the right IBM i talent or keeping them on staff? We can help. Connectria is a 4X winner of the IBM Beacon Award, and we host over 900 IBM environments worldwide. So there really is only one question you need to ask: Your systems or ours?

If you’ve invested heavily in hardware and just want someone to help you keep an eye on it, we can help with our remote monitoring services. Alternatively, you can choose to offload the overhead that comes with maintaining your IBM hardware and an on-premises data center, we can host your IBM Power Systems workloads on our IBM infrastructure.

Not sure which one is right for you? Reach out to us. We’d be happy to talk with you about your IBM i or AIX systems, so you can make the choice that’s right for you. You can also learn more by downloading our white paper: Extending the Life of Your IBM i Systems.

Heard about our Managed IBM Cloud with AWS and Azure?

This managed cloud solution helps organizations that rely on IBM Power Systems to modernize their IT infrastructure quickly while lowering risks. We’ll help you migrate your IBM i and AIX workloads to an IBM cloud in one of our SSAE 18 SOC Certified data centers while leveraging AWS or Azure for your cloud-native and X86 applications. The TRiA Multi-Cloud Management Platform, standard with all our managed cloud solutions, helps you optimize your cloud environments for security, performance, and cost – all from a single console. Learn more here.