Making Users Happy

Despite all of the legitimate complaining that many of us in the IBM midrange community do, it looks like the IT staff, business partners, and IBMers have their eye on the ball and are focused on satisfying the needs of clients. In other words the message from the preliminary results of the 2011 edition of the COMMON Europe Top Concerns survey of the OS/400 and i installed base.

Despite being managed by COMMON Europe, the Top Concerns survey of OS/400 and i shops is a global survey that seeks to take the pulse of IBM midrange clients and ultimately, in conjunction with other user groups and customer input, shape what Big Blue does--and doesn't do--with and for clients in the Power Systems-i base. This is the sixth global Top Concerns survey that COMMON Europe has put at the same time on behalf of the entire OS/400 and i community--and participation is not just limited to people who work at midrange shops in Europe, nevertheless is both global and multilingual, spanning the whole Power i community in Europe, the Americas, Australasia, and Africa through user groups, and anyone that can get to the site from the Web can take the survey. The 2011 survey covered security, application development, infrastructure, and cloud computing issues, as so then as basic demographic questions. It as well provided an open space to write in your own "golden concerns" or ask questions about current economic and Power/IBM i migration issues.

COMMON Europe was able to get 524 people to take the survey, and you will have to judge for yourself if this was a representative and large enough sample. Of these, 343 people taking the survey were clients, 152 were employees at consultants, software vendors, or other kinds of business partners, and 29 worked at IBM. Half of the respondents came from Europe, 31 percent from the Americas, 15 percent came from Africa, and the rest came from the Asia/Pacific region.

What can happen if your business is struck

iSeries managers know all too then what can happen if your business is struck by downtime or disaster and you don't have an adequate disaster recovery plan in place.

Unfortunately, too many business owners don't fully understand the financial and brand consequences associated with pursuant to this agreement-investing in disaster recovery planning.

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