Advancements in Information Technology

Advancements in Information Technology have moved at an extremely rapid pace over the decades. Particularly in the business world. With companies requiring more processing power every year, IT organizations worked to deliver those services.

One of those was IBM. In 1988, they introduced Application System/400, known today as simply AS400. A mainframe-based application (renamed iSeries in 2008), it became popular thanks to its high-level instruction set. This provided the ability to link the hardware and software together without recompiling code. Thus, when changes were made, they could be seamlessly incorporated into the environment.

As processing times increased and more applications performed the tasks AS400 once did, the platform began to lose popularity. Or so you would think. In reality, it is still used as much today as when it was introduced, if not more. There are two reasons for this.

First, terminal emulators are available that allow users to access AS/400 devices through Windows-based platforms. This reduces the amount of hardware someone needs to view operations. In other words, no need for a dedicated CRT monitor.

Second, AS/400 has become a huge part of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). This is business management software which allows a company to integrate and automate many back end applications for continued support.

Unfortunately, in some cases, companies neglected their AS/400 machines as they continued to upgrade their other technology. Therefore, the code within those systems is so out-of-date it can’t be incorporated into a modern ERP. So, they either find a developer to start from scratch or drop the platform from their planning software.

But they don’t have to do this. There are as400 modernization companies out there who can help save time and money. Organizations like AveriSource work with older codes like AS400, COBOL, and JCL to bring them up to modern standards in order to be part of the company again.

What these AS400 modernization companies do is map current applications to legacy software so the tasks required can be implemented. They remove any unnecessary, older code, clean up the remaining items, and add additional lines so it can connect to other programs within an ERP. And it doesn’t have to be part of this enterprise system. Smaller companies still use AS400 to keep track of inventory, print invoices, or maintain accounting.

In hiring a company like AveriSource to do this, organizations save money, update their AS400 code, and have a resource added back into their environment. In turn, this allows them to increase productivity. Overall, a win-win situation for everyone.