In 2019, the IBM Think conference garnered over 30,000 attendees. This year’s conference, like a lot of events, changed course when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. With remarkable swiftness, IBM reformatted its flagship conference into Think 2020 Digital, a live-but-virtual event that was held earlier this year in May to 90,000+ attendees.

Connectria Wins Business Unit Excellence Award at Think 2020

Each year, the IBM Business Unit Excellence Awards program recognizes IBM Business Partners, like Connectria, that deliver stand-out results to help drive business value and transform the way customers and industries operate. We learn from what other providers are doing to help their customers achieve even greater success with IBM Power Systems, and of course, we love being recognized for our achievements. This year, Connectria received an IBM Business Unit Excellence Award for “Excellence in Service Provider Performance Results.”

 “Being named as IBM’s largest service provider in North America is a tremendous honor which demonstrates the overwhelming success of Connectria’s IBM i and IBM AIX cloud solutions.” – Rich Waidmann, Connectria President and CEO.

So, how did we do it? Connectria was selected based on criteria established by IBM’s Systems Technology Service Providers Business Unit. Check out a few of the ways we support IBM business users and IBM’s strategic business initiatives below.

The Connectria Green Cloud Initiative

Our Green Cloud Initiative supports IBM’s ongoing commitment to sustainability as well as our customer’s desire to reduce their energy consumption. For example, simply maintaining a regular hardware refresh cycle for our IBM Power Systems servers has allowed us to decrease energy consumption in our data centers by over 95 percent since 2004. And we’re just getting started. The Green Cloud Initiative is one of Connectria’s core initiatives, so we have exciting announcements planned for the months ahead.

The Best Experts in the Business

For decades, enterprises around the world have relied on IBM Power Systems for their mission-critical data and applications. However, this longevity comes with a drawback. Many IBM systems engineers are reaching retirement age, and fewer recruits have experience with IBM Power Systems. Because of our presence in the marketplace, and ranking as a “Best Place to Work” in IT 17 times, we’re able to maintain a full staff of the best IBM Sys Admins and architectural experts in the business.

Dave Wiseman, our VP of Architecture, is a prime example of the caliber of IBM talent we have on the team. In 2020, he was named an IBM Champion, an elite group of the most passionate, loyal, and talented IBM advocates, experts, and thought leaders from around the world. Dave is part of a very small subset recognized for his contribution to the IBM i platform.

IBM Hosted, Private Cloud

Our dedicated hosting solutions allow our customers to deploy workloads on IBM systems in our highly secure data centers. These data centers are also SSAE 18, SOC I, and SOC II certified. Connectria’s ability to deliver mission-critical workloads in a hybrid cloud infrastructure utilizing IBM’s enterprise-grade solutions has helped grow Connectria’s Global Power Systems Cloud to North America’s largest IBM i cloud provider and the third-largest provider worldwide. We house more IBM i and IBM AIX workloads than any other provider outside of IBM.

IBM Remote Monitoring & Management

Our team of highly qualified specialists maintains the systems that house our customers’ workloads in-house. Of course, some customers still prefer to run their workloads on-prem and that’s ok too. Our IBM Remote Monitoring & Management services reduce the hassle of recruiting, hiring, and developing IBM talent. We function as a part of our customers’ IT operations, making sure their IBM Power Systems are high-performing and secure. This allows them to focus on the initiatives that move the business forward.

Managed IBM Cloud with AWS and Azure

Many of the enterprises we work with also house applications and data in AWS or Azure. We can help them choose the right environment for each workload, deploy workloads safely and securely, and even orchestrate workloads across environments with our Managed IBM Cloud with AWS and Azure. Download the white paper to learn more about how a Managed IBM Cloud with AWS and Azure can help you leverage a hybrid cloud environment that includes IBM Power Systems resources.

Disaster Recovery

IBM Power Systems are designed for mission-critical workloads, so a comprehensive disaster recovery plan is essential. We can help our customers architect an IBM Power Systems disaster recovery solution that meets their recovery objectives for each workload while minimizing costs. Learn more about IBM i Disaster Recovery options here. Additionally, our Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) solutions allows our customers to offload the management of their disaster recovery architecture, including testing, to us.

World-Class Support Services

We believe in transparency, so our Customer Portal provides our customers with 24×7 monitoring. Keep an eye on your systems, resources, and data, along with access to support requests and reporting services. We also provide support services 24×7 and can customize our service plans to meet our customers’ unique SLA requirements.

Contact Connectria to learn more about our wide range of additional managed services. To support our IBM customer base, we offer security & compliance, cloud migration services, and application support and development.