[Advertorial] Downtime costs every company a lot of money. Reduce the risk of downtime with a reliable IT infrastructure. With its PowerCloud on Power servers and IBM i, Comarch ensures that you can sleep peacefully.

IT managers today face complex challenges. Not only do they have to keep everything running 24/7, but they also have to constantly look for ways to do more with the resources available. Just like a house, the IT environment must therefore be placed on a solid foundation.

If this is not the case, the IT infrastructure represents an obstacle for your company. A constantly failing infrastructure not only costs your company money in the short term, but also hinders growth in the long term. Investing in a reliable and scalable infrastructure lays the foundation for an IT environment that grows with your needs. Together with Comarch we will discuss why you can build your IT house on IBM Power and IBM i with peace of mind.

The cost of downtime

Failed servers that can fail at any time: every IT administrator’s nightmare, but also a reality for many companies. Research from Forrester shows that four out of ten companies experience unplanned downtime at least once a month or even a week. Every second that your IT is not operational results in lost revenue for your company.

It is difficult to accurately quantify the downtime. Because the total costs include far more than lost income. Downtime can result in data loss, interrupted continuity, and unhappy customers if your services are unavailable too often.

Studies agree that the costs of downtime continue to rise. For large companies, estimates are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour. But even small businesses can miss downtime like a toothache.

Downtime is by no means the only concern that can cost your business money and cause headaches and anxiety for IT managers. Isolated IT systems with associated “information silos” and manual processes also slow down efficiency and growth. Companies need an IT infrastructure that stands for reliability but also promotes integration and automation.

99.9999%

Comarch has the solution for all your IT concerns. The Polish IT specialist runs its PowerCloud on IBM Power servers and that is no coincidence: the Power servers are a unique piece of IT. We previously took a detailed look under the hood.

Thanks to its robust and reliable hardware, IBM Power Servers guarantee 99.9999% uptime. Every decimal place makes a big difference here. This means that in the worst case scenario you will only… 3.3 minutes Downtime occurs every year.

Power servers are not only reliable, but also designed for flexibility and efficiency. They remain stable with CPU utilization of up to 95 percent. IBM Power also offers numerous virtualization capabilities and the consolidation of critical applications on a single platform.

IBM i and Power: bread and butter

Reliable hardware is important, but the power servers make the difference with their operating system. Although in principle you have the freedom to run an operating system of your choice on the servers, in many situations the standard IBM i option is the obvious choice. Finally, this operating system is tailor-made for power servers, so hardware and software fit together like bread and butter or even better.

IBM i is the heir to OS400, the operating system of the first generations of power servers. One of the major advantages of the operating system is that it is offered as an integrated operating system. Unlike classic operating systems where the various components are “glued” together, IBM i integrates everything into a cohesive stack.

This enables significant cost savings for companies. Firstly, IBM i guarantees high availability. Reboots are rarely, if ever, necessary, and even when they are, a quick recovery process ensures minimal impact. Thanks to the unique architecture, you enjoy increased security against cyber attacks or data loss.

But administrators and end users also benefit from IBM i. The user-friendly interface requires no special knowledge and minimizes maintenance. Time-consuming routine tasks such as invoicing, data management and workflows are completely automated. In this way, IBM i ensures that you only have to worry about your business and not your IT infrastructure.

Unleash the power

Despite all their proven benefits, power servers face some persistent prejudices. One of these prejudices is that it is an expensive technology. This could be true if you bought the servers yourself.

A single power server can easily cost tens of thousands of euros. Then there is the maintenance. If you don’t take care of your servers, performance will degrade over time and promises of high availability will end up in the trash.

You might be thinking that power servers are beyond the budget of a typical SMB, but that doesn’t have to be the case. By working with a reliable partner, you can significantly reduce entry costs. Comarch offers cloud services on its own IBM infrastructure. PowerCloud combines the performance and reliability of power servers with the flexibility and scalability of the cloud.

Comarch’s pay-as-you-go model ensures you only pay for what you use. No upfront costs or unpleasant surprises with the final bill. PowerCloud grows with your company: the amount of server performance can be adjusted to your needs at any time. Moving the energy infrastructure to the cloud enables cost savings of up to forty percent. In addition, Comarch ensures a seamless transition to the cloud.

Comarch’s experts take over the management of the servers for you. This way, the IT team doesn’t have to worry about checking if all the lights are on. Security is also guaranteed in the Comarch data center. You can be confident that your infrastructure is always ready.

This is a commercial post in collaboration with Comarch and part of a three-part series on IBM Power. Click here for more information about PowerCloud-Solutions.