A Word from iTech Solutions President, Pete Massiello.
Greetings iTech Fan!
As time marches on, sometimes you look back and think “Wow, that didn’t seem that long ago”. Well, that is my thought about Power6 and Power7 servers which are going End of Life this year. Yeah, the POWER6 has been out quite a long time, and when you look at the specifications compared to a POWER9, it is a slow old machine. POWER6 machines will go end of Life on March 31, 2019, followed by the POWER7 (not POWER7 Plus) servers end of September.
What does this mean for you? More expensive maintenance, a slower machine than what is currently on the market, and unsupported hardware. POWER6 can’t run the current version of IBM i, nor will POWER7 be able to run the next release of IBM i (yet to be named) that is due out this year (IBM has issued a Statement of Direction, that iNext won’t run on POWER7 hardware). We are having a webinar on What End of Support means to you and why you need to start acting now, on March 20th .
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Webinars
Speaking of Webinars, we did two POWER9 Question and Answer Webinars, the first in January and the second in February. Each webinar was almost to the capacity of the service, so there is quite a lot of questions and interest about POWER9. There were so many questions submitted, we had questions we sent back answers to because we didn’t have enough time to answer them between the two webinars. If you are on an older server, it is time to look at what a POWER9 server can do for you. In the end, POWER9 is faster, cheaper, and better. Not a bad combination.
The webinars were recorded, so if you weren’t able to attend them, you can watch the replays.
We have been installing these POWER9 servers all over the United States and Canada, and they are just amazing. I always love to see the smile on the customers faces when they run their work on the new machine, and they say to me “It’s done already, how can that be”. I just smile and say “POWER9”.
We will be doing more webinars throughout the year, as we reach out to the IBM i community in new ways to help you leverage your investment in Power Systems and IBM i. Stay tuned for the topics. Wait a minute, your existing Business Partner isn’t doing the same thing? Perhaps you have the wrong IBM Business Partner. Come over to the iTech side. Read the next paragraph and you will understand why many IBM i customers have chosen iTech Solutions, and more importantly — why they stay.
Customer Feedback
Customer satisfaction is very important to us here at iTech Solutions and is high among our customers. To measure customer satisfaction, Heather and Vanessa have been using the Net Promotor Score (NPS) method. For those of you who haven’t heard about it, or aren’t entirely sure what it is, Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a management tool that can be used to gauge the loyalty of a firm’s customer relationships. NPS has been widely adopted with more than two thirds of Fortune 1000 companies using the metric. The tool aims to measure the loyalty that exists between a provider and a consumer. This measures how likely a customer is to recommend your services on a scale from -100 to 100. Given the NPS range of -100 to +100, a “positive” score or NPS above 0 is considered “good”, +50 is “Excellent,” and above 70 is considered “world class.”
I am ecstatic to report that our current NPS score is a 96. We appreciate our customer’s feedback and will continue to exceed expectations. If we aren’t exceeding your expectations each and every time, contact medirectly.
Conference Season is Upon Us
It’s the start of “Conference Season” in the IBM i world, and this year is no different than any other year. I was at the IBM Think conference last week in San Francisco with 30,000 others. It was an amazing week, attending sessions on new technology, listening how others are succeeding with existing technology, hearing about technology that is coming, and interacting with other speakers, vendors, IBM’ers, and attendees.
It was very eye opening, and also allowed me to think about the technology and skills we will need to bring in over the next 5 years so that we can help you leverage your investment in your IBM i. We will be here working with you on how we make you reach your goals. We are here for you now, and we will be here for you in the future.
Back to upcoming conferences, we will be speaking and/or exhibiting in the next few months:
It will be a busy season, and we look forward to seeing and meeting you at these conferences. Check out more details in our event section.
I know I spoke about this last month, but it is worth repeating. 2019 also brings iTech Solutions 3 IBM Champions. Richie Palma, Steve Pitcher, and myself. iTech is honored to have 3 IBM Power Systems champions, and I know as the first Lifetime Power Systems Champion, that it is a very high honor to be in that small group of individuals that IBM has named.
The champions are members of the IBM i community that have a passion for the platform, a desire to help others in the community, and go above and beyond their jobs for the community. It’s an honor that I am very proud of, as well as to be a member of the group. We are so proud and happy that both Steve and Richie joined us the last few years, but quite honestly when I talk with our customers they are even happier.
In this newsletter, you’ll find the following:
I have performed many swaps or switches for replication software for the IBM i and a question I hear often is “What is the difference between a swap/switches and a Virtual one?” 
People are always asking me how often they should be performing PTF maintenance, and when is the right time to upgrade their operating system. I updated this article from last month with the current levels of PTFs. Let’s look at PTFs. First, PTFs are Program Temporary Fixes that are created by IBM to fix a problem that has occurred or to possibly prevent a problem from occurring. In addition, some times PTFs add new functionality, security, or improve performance. Therefore, I am always dumbfounded as to why customers do not perform PTF maintenance on their machine at least quarterly.
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