Is the IBM i Brain Drain driving you down the road to modernisation?
The IBM i (historically the iSeries and AS/400) is still one of the most widely found platforms around the world, especially in highly regulated or risk averse organisations where its reputation for reliability and security are import values. It has not often been considered ‘exciting’ however it has even seen something of new lease of life with recent open source and wider technology integration announcements.
Despite this resurgence, one of the challenges for organisations using the platform is that the long acquired knowledge of the technology, and the system which it runs so reliably, is not getting any younger and as this knowledge pool retires it is creating some of a ‘brain drain’ which is hard to stem. There is a shortage of people with the valuable knowledge, a shortage of opportunities for people to train on the technology and a shortage of people wanting to learn about it against other tech areas which are considered more topical and exciting.
This all helps the drive to modernize the systems which run on this venerable IBM platform so that a new understanding, along with benefits from new methods and technologies are gained.
Whether your plan is modernization or the status quo, knowledge and understanding is a key element to retain. This is a challenge that can be addressed more easily than you might expect based on a simple, proven approach and some technology to enable it.
Original Software has joined forces with i400hub to present a webinar on how to understand and document what actually happens inside your IBM i systems and programs. What they actually do when you use them and how they connect. It provides diagnostic akin to having x-ray vision or like when you take your modern car to the garage and they plug it into their computer.
