Thoroughly Modern: Digital Solutions For IBM i And Beyond

November 7, 2022 Marcel Sarrasin and Scott Gingerysty

IT leaders need to develop strategies that address business goals but also look ahead to a changing economic climate and disruptions. Digital innovation (web, mobile, APis, cloud, etc.) is one of the fastest growing areas of IT. And it’s no wonder – taking on these initiatives while using an iterative approach can deliver quick wins and attainable near-term impacts. This allows organizations to invest in ways that are sustainable.

As organizations look to new business models, seeing technology as a way to accomplish business objectives is the right approach. Competition, market disruption, growth, cost optimization and responding to client needs are all fueling digital innovation. And a growing number of organizations across industries are seeing great results by accelerating their digital efforts – but not at any cost.

With this in mind, how do IT leaders determine which digital direction will provide the best results and where should organizations invest?

Digital Solutions Trends And High Value Initiatives

The working world has changed, and strategies have evolved. Here are the trends that we are seeing:

Business Process Improvement & Automation – Around half of all existing work activities could be automated in the next few decades, as next-level process automation and virtualization become more commonplace. Automating and optimizing business processes can provide significant business benefits and cost savings for functions like claims processing, reporting, quotations, document management, and approval requests. IT is getting more requests from the business to streamline tasks – automating and consolidating wherever possible to reduce complexity and redundancy.
The Future of Connectivity – Faster and better digital connections help organizations unlock significant economic activity and we’re seeing we are working with more companies who need to integrate their IBM i data and applications to other servers. Integration is driving shifts in the business landscape, from the digitization of manufacturing (through wireless control of mobile tools, machines and robots) to decentralized energy delivery and remote patient monitoring.
Distributed Infrastructure – Companies are realizing significant benefits with hybrid-cloud and/or multi-cloud platforms as part of a distributed IT infrastructure. Data and processing that is being handled in the cloud is made accessible to devices faster. Leading analysts at McKinsey recently shared that “This tech trend is helping companies boost their speed and agility, reduce complexity, save costs and strengthen their cybersecurity defenses.”
Adopting Modern Skills – Many IBM i developers will need to reskill in the next five years to include technologies such as full-stack development and cloud adoption. As the economic impacts of the pandemic and automation take hold, IT leaders are getting outside help to gain access to these skills quickly and meet immediate business needs while internal skills build.
APIs And A Modern Solution Stack – IT leaders are changing to multi-tiered architectures to take advantage of faster development, improve scalability, reliability and security – across multiple platforms. Every new web development project that we work on includes API multi-tier development because it allows agility, flexibility and speeds up delivery.
Agile Development – More developers and teams are adapting new, agile ways of working and seeing the benefits in being able to deliver incrementally to the business. This also keeps IT teams, developers, and supporting staff in-sync and accountable.
DevOps – As organizations race to implement new solutions quickly and be more competitive, the adoption of DevOps has quickly become a priority in IT. We consistently see a need to keep environments stable, breaking down silos, introducing automation and removing manual processes. This helps promote best development practices such as change management, incremental deployment, continuous improvement, automated deployments, roll-backs, and documentation, to name a few.

Everything Is Possible with Digital Innovation

Choosing the right strategy for your organization can feel daunting because everything is possible with digital technologies. The core front-end technologies for web development (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) have been almost unchanged over the past several (up 1 percent, up 2 percent, and down 3 percent, respectively). They’re the foundational technologies for the web.

In terms of back-end technologies, PHP continues to be a strong choice for new web development. It is estimated that almost 80 percent of the Web is built with it – a good indicator that PHP isn’t leaving anytime soon. The good news is that IBM i can integrate with any Web technology – PHP, Java, Node.js, Python, and more.

How To Find The Quick Wins

Over the years, we’ve helped our customers reach their modernization and integration goals including but not limited to:

New web and mobile application development
Green screen modernization to leverage and extend existing applications
APIs and integration (e.g. SaaS, Portals, workflow automation, ERP extension)
Wire frames and Proof of Concept (POC) to streamline development process
Database modernization
Mentoring and training

Because digital innovation is one of IT’s fastest growing areas, we’ve expanded our IT and IBM i services to help the IBM i community quickly access the skills they need to grow, compete and challenge the status quo. Our new digital services include a wider scope to include:

Full-stack development on IBM i and other platforms
Application strategy, discovery and analysis
Cloud adoption
DevOps services

Why us? We have a hundred full-time experts that are focused on application modernization and maintainability: digital solutions, transformation – covering all areas of IBM i and beyond. We have a unique skillset in terms of knowing the available platforms, technologies and strategies because we’ve completed so many projects for so many clients on and off IBM i. Many of our clients tell us that they consider us an extension of their team. We’re also flexible. Any size project – big or small. We’ve got your back.

Get In Touch

Have a project in mind? Need help with your strategy? We welcome you to get in touch to explore your digital initiatives for 2022 and beyond.

You can contact either of us via email or set up a free consultation here.

Marcel Sarrasin is chief product officer at Fresche Solutions and can be reached at marcel.sarrasin@freschesolutions.com and Scott Gingerysty is team lead for Web application services at Fresche Solutions and can be reached at scott.gingerysty@freschesolutions.com

This content is sponsored by Fresche Solutions.

This Issue Sponsored By

Table of Contents

Content archive

Recent Posts

Subscribe

Pages

Search