Finding certainty in an uncertain world:
preparing your IT systems for anything
We live in volatile times, but one thing is sure: making the right technology decisions is central to success in virtually every industry. In the face of uncertainty about global trade, economic stability, Brexit and more, companies continue to invest in IT to elevate business performance and prepare their operations to ride out any storm. It’s predicted that worldwide IT spending will increase by 0.6% this year alone, with the enterprise software market growing by 9% to reach a global total of $457 billion.
But with so many IT solutions to choose from, are you making the right choices to ensure you flourish for years to come? Vendors such as IBM are recognising that both non-stop availability and agility of IT systems is now a business essential for a wider range of companies than ever before. Gone are the days when the need for 24/7 access to data was limited a handful of sectors. Today, factors such as rising customer expectations and access to international markets make downtime a no-no for everyone from banking to retail to logistics. And the ability to innovate freely is only growing in importance as disruption rocks industry after industry.
In response, IBM is placing continuous availability and flexibility front and centre in its product roadmaps. Specifically, the release of IBM i 7.4 is an opportunity for users to step up the resilience and versatility of their business-critical environments to greater heights. Working with Northdoor, enterprises can navigate the upgrade to IBM i 7.4 with minimal disruption to operations, enabling your business to start enjoying the great benefits sooner.
Preparing for the unexpected
The headline advancement in IBM i 7.4 is IBM Db2 Mirror for i, which could transform the way you recover from disaster. We can help you use it to pair two IBM i instances, which could be on two separate IBM Power Systems servers, connecting them with a super-high-speed RoCE connection. The result? Your applications can use Db2 on both instances at once, keeping databases synchronised between the two nodes and providing a recovery time objective (RTO) that’s close to zero.
IBM i 7.4 also ramps up its security credentials, protecting you against disruption to operations through compromise of your systems. It takes the Authority Collection feature, first introduced in the IBM i 7.3 release, one step further, allowing you to identify and control which users access specific objects. We can show you how to use the function to apply your security policies without restricting user productivity.
Removing barriers to innovation should be a priority for any company. By incorporating new capabilities for RPG and COBOL into IBM i 7.4, IBM is giving your developers new options.
At Northdoor, we keep track of IBM’s engagement with the open source community to ensure that our customers are kept aware of any further updates.
To kickstart your migration to IBM i 7.4, get in touch with Northdoor today. Our deep knowledge of the IBM i on Power Systems portfolio and how it fits into diverse IT environments can help you achieve a smooth transition to the newest release of the operating system. Best of all, we’ll help you get the most out of the technology, so you can enjoy better availability, security and agility and carve that crucial edge over your competitors.