eSP Changes Name to evolveIT, Keeps i-Focused

March 13, 2007 Alex Woodie

eBusiness Solution Pros (eSP), the Southern California developer of System i terminal emulators for wireless warehouse environments, has changed its name to evolveIT, the company announced last week.

As eSP, the Tustin, California, company attracted many users of Stay-Linked, a host-based 5250 emulator designed to address many of the problems of dropped radio frequency (RF) connections in busy indoor warehouse environments.

The company decided to change its name from eSP to evolveIT to better reflect the company’s direction, as well as its focus on the IBM System i platform and the need to modernize legacy OS/400 and i5/OS applications.

David Griffith, president and CEO of evolveIT, says the rebranding is important because it more accurately reflects the company’s core competencies, which is more than e-business. “Companies have spent a long time–and a lot of money–developing their core systems and IT staff to the point where they are today,” he says. “With our help, this investment can be used as a foundation to meet new challenges and add new capabilities to their business.”

Many of these core legacy systems are based on the System i platform, which has evolved from S/36, AS/400, iSeries, and i5 platforms–and received a new name at each step along the way.

“We’ve always been very successful at filling technology gaps within our clients’ existing IBM System i environments,” says Daniel Hogan, evolveIT’s vice president, client technical services. “Experience has proven that there’s no need for a total systems replacement to deliver the critical incremental changes necessary for businesses to operate in today’s technology-driven marketplace.”

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Do the Math When Looking at IBM i Hosting for Cost Savings

COVID-19 has accelerated certain business trends that were already gaining strength prior to the start of the pandemic. E-commerce, telehealth, and video conferencing are some of the most obvious examples. One example that may not be as obvious to the general public but has a profound impact on business is the shift in strategy of IBM i infrastructure from traditional, on-premises environments to some form of remote configuration. These remote configurations and all of their variations are broadly referred to in the community as IBM i hosting.

“Hosting” in this context can mean different things to different people, and in general, hosting refers to one of two scenarios. In the first scenario, hosting can refer to a client owned machine that is housed in a co-location facility (commonly called a co-lo for short) where the data center provides traditional system administrator services, relieving the client of administrative and operational responsibilities. In the second scenario, hosting can refer to an MSP owned machine in which partition resources are provided to the client in an on-demand capacity. This scenario allows the client to completely outsource all aspects of Power Systems hardware and the IBM i operating system and database.

The scenario that is best for each business depends on a number of factors and is largely up for debate. In most cases, pursuing hosting purely as a cost saving strategy is a dead end. Furthermore, when you consider all of the costs associated with maintaining and IBM i environment, it is typically not a cost-effective option for the small to midsize market. The most cost-effective approach for these organizations is often a combination of a client owned and maintained system (either on-prem or in a co-lo) with cloud backup and disaster-recovery-as-a-service. Only in some cases of larger enterprise companies can a hosting strategy start to become a potentially cost-effective option.

However, cost savings is just one part of the story. As IBM i expertise becomes scarce and IT resources run tight, the only option for some firms may be to pursue hosting in some capacity. Whatever the driving force for pursing hosting may be, the key point is that it is not just simply an option for running your workload in a different location. There are many details to consider and it is to the best interest of the client to work with an experienced MSP in weighing the benefits and drawbacks of each option. As COVID-19 rolls on, time will tell if IBM i hosting strategies will follow the other strong business trends of the pandemic.

When we say do the math in the title above, it literally means that you need to do the math for your particular scenario. It is not about us doing the math for you, making a case for either staying on premises or for moving to the cloud. There is not one answer, but just different levels of cost to be reckoned which yield different answers. Most IBM i shops have fairly static workloads, at least measured against the larger mix of stuff on the public clouds of the world. How do you measure the value of controlling your own IT fate? That will only be fully recognized at the moment when it is sorely missed the most.

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Article featured in IT Jungle on April 5, 2021