Jack Henry’s Gladiator ESM Goes GA

March 3, 2009 Alex Woodie

Jack Henry & Associates last month announced the general availability of Gladiator Enterprise Security Monitoring (ESM), a real-time security monitoring solution for customers of its i OS-based SilverLake and CIF 20/20 banking applications that looks for, and alerts administrators to, security threats inside and outside the firewall.

Gladiator ESM, which first debuted in October, is a hosted security system that’s designed to track security and performance events that might impact the operations of SilverLake and CIF 20/20 applications. As a fully integrated IBM i OS security solution, the offering provides deep coverage of the host operating system, including the capability to capture audit events that may be missed by non-native products that are unfamiliar with the i OS platform.

“With ESM, we have truly blazed a new trail within the information security arena because there is not another vendor in this vertical market that has the ability to monitor the operating system and core application in real time,” says Danny Johnston, group president of Gladiator Technology, which is a unit of Jack Henry subsidiary ProfitStars.

One happy Gladiator user is Sherry Wiggins, the senior vice president of information security at Georgia Bank & Trust in Augusta, Georgia. “The decision to become an ESM client was really a no-brainer for us since Gladiator already was providing monitoring of our servers, firewall, and network intrusion-prevention appliance,” Wiggins says in a press release. “And now that Gladiator is monitoring our IBM Power System, we have a single, consolidated report that shows us what we need to be concerned with–that makes my job so much easier.”

Jack Henry Unleashes Hosted DR for i Systems

Jack Henry Acquires Gladiator Technology

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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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Please visit ucgtechnologies.com/IBM-POWER9-systems for more information.

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Article featured in IT Jungle on April 5, 2021

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