Midrange Stuff, OS/400 Edition

Since it was established as a subsidiary of OS/400 banking software vendor Jack Henry & Associates seven years ago, Centurion has signed up approximately 60 percent, or 1,100, of Jack Henry software users as its own customers. In January, Centurion launched a new campaign to begin offering its disaster recovery services to the wide range of OS/400 shops working in industries besides banking.

So far, Centurion has only a handful of non-banking clients, near its headquarters in Angola, Indiana, the first disaster recovery (DR) location to offer the DR services to additional industries. However, officials with Centurion are confident that, once companies get word of DR services designed and priced for small and midsized AS/400 and iSeries shops, business will be on the upswing.

"We feel there's a real need in the small and midrange iSeries companies for a place to use as a recovery center, and for disaster contingency planning," said Doug Barton, general manager of the Centurion division. "We want to cater to them. The other guys in the DR business [Sungaard and IBM Global Services] set their sights on the big companies. We set our sights on the small and midrange companies. They need to have service, too, and there's not much out there."

Centurion decided to roll out the wider DR services to non-banking customers from its headquarters in northeastern Indiana. From there, Centurion identified 24,000 OS/400 shops in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan, and is using targeted marketing through local chambers of commerce to reach them. The way Barton tells it, Centurion is breaking new ground. "The competition is very limited. Nobody in Indiana is doing this," he said. "I think there's an opportunity across the whole country."

As the Indiana operation gets up to speed, Barton will oversee the roll out of DR services for non-banking OS/400 shops from the next Centurion DR site, in Birmingham, Alabama. Eventually, the same service will be offered to non-banking customers from the seven other Centurion DR locations that are equipped with OS/400 servers (it has a total of 11 DR sites), which spread across the country from Danbury, Connecticut, to Sun Valley, California. "We feel, if we're able to help the bankers in the financial industry, which is one of the most heavily regulated, we'll be able to help companies in other industries," Barton said.

While the 20 or so Centurion technicians under Barton's watch have worked with the same Jack Henry group banking systems for most customer engagements (Jack Henry offers a range of OS/400, Unix, and Windows applications, but most of Centurion's work as been on OS/400), the technicians won't have that luxury when they start working with companies in the automotive, manufacturing, healthcare, education, and insurance industries. Barton dismisses that as a problem: "The big guys don't offer anything but equipment and a room," he said. "We're going to offer more than equipment and a room. We're going to offer personalized service."

As the new DR services come online, Barton said, Centurion will maintain the high level of customer service that Jack Henry as a whole is known for. "In the small and midrange companies, lots of times, they need to have expertise in DR beyond having equipment in a room," he said. "There's a need to do business with people on a personal level, rather than keeping them at arm's length.

One of the ways that Barton hopes to distinguish and personalize Centurion's DR offering is through business contingency planning. The company offers a range of contingency planning services, from checking out a company's existing plans to designing contingency plans from scratch and implementing them. Centurion has offered contingency planning for only about three years, during which time it has done planning for 175 customers. But contingency planning is a hot segment, and it's growing at a faster rate than the rest of the business, especially in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The focus on small and midsized shops means that Centurion will leave some deals on the table, if necessary. A large company with multiple OS/400 systems will probably be better off going to Sungaard or IBM Global Services, Barton said. However, that leaves plenty of opportunity for Centurion to target small and midsized OS/400 shops.

Barton said the price of Centurion's DR services can range widely, and is based on the size of the primary OS/400 server, how many communication lines and terminals are required, and other factors. Some customers may pay only a few thousand dollars per year, while larger companies may pay up to $60,000 per year for the insurance and peace of mind that Centurion offers. At the higher end of the spectrum, larger customers may opt for a high-availability solution, where data is constantly replicated from the primary site to one of Centurion's OS/400 servers. Jack Henry has a strategic partnership with Lakeview Technology, and the only high-availability system that Centurion works with is Lakeview's MIMIX.

While Centurion does its best to prevent IT disasters (say, by performing a roll swap before an AS/400 goes down), it can't prevent them all from occurring at customer sites. Like soldiers who train for war but dread it all the same, Centurion's technicians are often called to duty. In 2002, Centurion customers experienced 22 disasters, while 38 were avoided. "We're just as proud of [the potential disasters] as the actual ones, because the customers didn't have to declare a disaster," Barton said. "If we see a hurricane coming up the coast, we'll call them on the phone, just to give them encouragement, in case they do get hit."