Maxava Consulting Services Does More Than HA/DR Project Management – A Lot More

May 12, 2025 Yvonne Enselman

IT organizations have been having to do more with less for so long that it is frankly amazing that anything at all gets done some decades later. And the funny thing is that the To Do list just keeps getting longer – and wider – as the years go by.

We know exactly how short-staffed and over-burdened IBM i shops are, and that is why Maxava is launching Maxava Consulting Services, a new arm of the high availability software maker that aims to provide a broad and deep set of strategic and tactical services to help IBM i shops get stuff – important stuff – done, and done right.

To help get the word out about MCS, we decided to turn the tables on Timothy Prickett Morgan and ask him to do a Q&A interview with me to talk about what MCS is and how it can help you bring together resources for IT projects and manage them through to completion. We hope you enjoy this conversation, think about how we can help, and then reach out to us so that we can.

Timothy Prickett Morgan: Everybody knows that you were at iTech Solutions for a long time – nearly eight years – but they might not know that you have a long career in RPG programming as well as quality assurance and testing across several IBM i users such as OneMain Financial, Brotherhood Mutual Insurance, and Tripp Lite as well as a bunch of vendors such as Service Express, iTech, Rocket Software, and Original Software.

How did Maxava Consulting Services get its start, and what is the plan?

Yvonne Enselman: The executive management at Maxava and I started talking about a consulting services business about a year and a half ago, and he thought that this was a really great idea. We agreed that the one thing that the IBM i world was missing is a high-end, senior-level project optimizer.

There are plenty of companies that have big projects, but they don’t have the bandwidth to take care of them in house. And so they can bring in MCS, which can organize the project because we know the business end of projects and we also know the QA part as well as the IBM i platform. And so we can organize everything and get the project through to completion, working with the business stakeholders to get everything communicated properly and see the project through. And because there is so much staff augmentation needed now, there tends to be a third parties involved to get the resources that any project needs. We can go to IBM Lab Services, any number of consulting firms, and use in-house resources to get everything we need and get it done. This has been my own personal sweet spot for years, and now MCS is launching and we’re ready for customers.

TPM: You can’t try to boil the ocean when you start a new division or a new business, so what is the initial focus for MCS?

Yvonne Enselman: The primary focus is professional services and project leadership. Bringing the infrastructure of Maxava and IBM i knowledge in high availability and disaster recovery is a given. However, MCS also has resources for strategic planning, project management, quality assurance and testing, security, system health and administration, recovery auditing and verification, storage, and AI. MCS can be the conduit connecting companies to the myriad services and tools they need to do whatever project they have under our management.

I have got over two decades of experience handling big projects, and I’ve got the project plans. I’ve seen it, I’ve done it. So I have all the plans already in place. I’ve already seen these projects through to completion over many, many years. I know where the pitfalls are, which is one of the biggest problems. And of course, MCS has all of Maxava behind it.

TPM: What kind of projects will MCS be useful for? Hybrid cloud is an obvious one, given IBM’s own push in this area. And application and database modernization in addition to disaster recovery is obvious.

Yvonne Enselman: All true, but there is an even more obvious one. We have new Power11-based Power Systems coming out in the fall, and for so many companies, when they go to a new Power System, they are acutely aware that they’re changing all of their infrastructure, and with QA standards getting higher and higher, management is saying they need to make sure that this is all being tested properly. That’s a really good place to call us in. We can organize the testing. We can work with all the teams and prove that your third party vendors are certified. But for so many people, that’s a really daunting thing, because staffs are just so tight right now. They may want to move to a Power11 machine, which is great, but they really do not have people to organize the testing and verification process that is the key part in a Power11 the migration. That’s a great place to bring us in.

TPM: I presume, with Maxava being a global organization, MCS is as well?

Yvonne Enselman: We can take down projects wherever we are needed. Maxava has a huge global network of employees and partners and infrastructure, and it has worked globally for many decades. So we don’t have any problem with taking on absolutely anything – and we’ve got the infrastructure to support it. I have a very strong technical staff behind me, and of course, as we move forward, we will also get more project managers in place.

But here is the important thing: Maxava and I saw the same thing when we talked to companies, who told us independently that they don’t have anyone who can talk to the management team. And they do not have anyone who can take a project and put it into a “executivespeak” and do all the summarizations and they also do not have people who can bridge the technical team. We have the consultants, and if we need to bring in IBM or a business partner because the business team that can’t spell “IBM i,” that’s fine. We come in and get things through that very challenging circumstance.

TPM: Give me a good example of where MCS can hit the ground running and help IBM i customers?

Yvonne Enselman: A good example of how MCS can help is reviewing HA/DR readiness. Maxava is known for our strength in this area, but MCS can help customers with any HA/DR solutions in place, not just the ones from Maxava.

A first step is performing an audit on a scheduled basis to make sure replication is worked as intended and anything that is modified is accounted for. Maxava has a certification process for this and can help provide proof to customers, partners, and other stakeholders that the environment is switch ready. What happens if a company fails this certification? Customers may need assistance in remediation. Many companies need to perfume role swaps on a regular basis, which is an important practice. However, there are many more components to this than just the replication software and environments. There are hardware concerns for the actual infrastructure of both systems, testing needs to account for performance and ancillary applications, the actual process should be rehearsed by the key players.

And, of course, a comprehensive project plan and thorough testing gives confidence that everything can be repeated under the most challenging circumstances. Especially given how many companies are using a hybrid on premises and cloud solution these tests are more involved and complicated. By matching the technical experience of Maxava in this crucial area and the project and quality assurance leadership of MCS organizations can have the needed verification from experts that systems are fit for purpose. So often the cause of failure is because of the unknown issues that teams don’t have time or specific skills to determine. Outsourcing these tasks takes stress off the IT department so they can focus on the day to day needs of the business.

TPM: What about AI, which is obviously the hot topic these days? Let’s talk about that because I think people are stymied big time on how to get started. Many companies are afraid to use AI in production because it hallucinates and because it is not precisely deterministic in its responses.

Yvonne Enselman: My advice here is that AI is coming, and if you look at a lot of the IT administration and programming and management that are currently being sold marketed, it is using a form of AI. I personally am aggressively learning about AI in our space for a couple of different reasons, but it’s definitely coming, and this is an area where Maxava and MCS are exploring new options and we are very open to working with experts in the field.

We already have some AI tools in place. For example, we have an AI tool that can look at your current configuration and what you are going to be installing, and point out all of the areas that something can go wrong. It is perfect for AI to take my project plan and evaluate the two configs of Power Systems.

For more information, reach out to MCS at https://www.maxava.com/consulting-services-mcs-for-ibmi.

Yvonne Enselman is general manager of Maxava Consulting Services, which is being launched this week, and an IBM Champion 2024.

This content is sponsored by Maxava.

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