Written by Doug | Jun 14, 2012 4:00:00 AM
Atlanta IT solutions and services provider continues to drive innovation in the used iSeries marketplace. Abacus Solutions, an IT solutions and services provider, has recently received extensive attention and press around its “i in the cloud” offering. While Abacus has been providing hosting and support services for about three years, “i in the cloud” is another branch of those offerings, responding to widespread demand for AS400 cloud environments. Abacus has its roots in the secondary market, having established itself as an iSeries and pSeries reseller in 2000. Over time, Abacus has added engineers and support technicians to expand its offerings into the IT solutions and services space, as well as gained expertise in many of the leading IT products and solutions. The “i in the cloud” offering is revolutionary in that the customer does not have to purchase the whole Power6 machine. Abacus leverages its in-house hosting services to sell “slices” of the Power6 machines at a low price. These “slices” can be used for development or to run production applications. This offers a hefty price break for customers who do not want to invest in an entirely new server. “When we brainstormed about this, we originally thought it would be for development environments,” said Patrick Schutz, Abacus’ director of managed services and support. “But we have been pleasantly surprised by the number of customers who want to move production IBM i environments to the cloud.” When a customer chooses Abacus to host the AS400 environments, it means that the Abacus technicians are working around the clock to ensure that the environment is running and secure. “Our average response time for tech support is under 10 minutes,” Schutz continued. “We are people, not some faceless cloud giant. We are big enough to matter but small enough to care.” Recently Abacus expanded its
used iSeries cloud even further by joining with Infor to create the “System i Cloud” offering. Infor is the third largest provider of enterprise applications and services. This plan gives customers access to both Infor technical resources, as well as support from the Abacus “i in the Cloud” offering. More information about the solution and partnership, which were announced this year at the COMMON tradeshow in Los Angeles, can be found at
http://www.mcpressonline.com/analysis-of-news-events/new-tools-insights-and-solutions-mark-common-2012-vendor-announcements.html.