Who is Monitoring Your AS/400 Over the Holidays?

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alertIt’s that time of the year when employees lobby management and each other for premium time-off over the holidays. Even if vacation time is set months earlier, most companies are juggling to cover lights-on IT during holidays. So who is covering your AS/400 or IBM i power systems during these next few weeks?

It’s not too late to put the “employee that never sleeps” on your wish list. Message monitoring and notification software is like having another set of eyes 24/7 searching relentlessly to spot error messages that alert you about failed tape drives, imminent disc capacity overload, power outage, print and electronic report back-ups, and much more.

The damage to core business if critical error messages on an IBM Power System go undetected is substantial, because most likely that is where your critical applications are hosted that run the jobs that run the business.

  • Credit card processing
  • Invoicing
  • Accounting
  • Online banking
  • Reporting
  • Sales Figures
  • Customer communications
  • Check Printing 

Message Monitoring software also helps to ensure backup. Losing data could result in regulatory hot water in some industries and can mean a significant loss of income in others. For example, you can’t process sales if credit card processing is down and you can’t invoice if there is a software glitch or input error that sends a job into a loop.

Message Monitoring software for the AS/400 is a small investment that pays immense dividends day after day, month after month, year after year. Well designed monitoring and notification software will send an immediate alert about error messages that indicate imminent problems, or failures that just occurred.

Especially during holidays when staff thins out, it’s critical to keep your IBM Power System running smoothly.

3 things to know about how message monitoring and notification software works

  1. First of all it’s very easy to install. No programming is necessary. You choose what error messages to follow by setting sentries. You can filter out messages that are non-critical.
  2. Choose your responder schedule. The person on-call will get an immediate text message when a message error is noted by the software sentries. Additionally, an email will be sent to the pre-set email address. You can even program the software to contact other responders on the list in case the first responder is not reachable.
  3. Depending on the type of error message, a list of “how-to fix” instructions can be emailed to the responder or an alert can be sent to 3rd party vendors.

The impetus to purchase message monitoring and notification software comes down to peace of mind. Whether your staff is thinned out because of holidays or budget cuts, the need to protect your AS400 or IBM I and the critical applications it runs never diminishes. This holiday season think about grabbing a little peace of mind about one of the most key components of your IT.

 

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