How do your employees feel about your AS/400?

My wife was shopping in a major well known jewelry store this past week.  The employees apologized profusely for the difficulties in looking up her account and resolving an issue.  The system was an old AS/400 (IBM i on Power) based system running.  It was using a 5250 based user interface and the employee and her manager were totally frustrated in the difficulties of performing what should have been a simple task of looking up a customer and reviewing recent sales to the customer!

I checked into a hotel that was using an IBM i based system.  We had a price quote that was not matching the information that the desk clerk had in his 5250 based system.  He asked his manager to help and they still couldn't find the information we had.  Since we had a printed confirmation they honored the rates that had been quoted, but they had to call corporate to get help entering the overrides into the system.

I began moving the company I was working at the time to the web via Java and WebSphere and subsequently WebSphere portal back in 1995 and implemented our first web based applications in January of 1996 when the web was opened for commercial use.  Many AS/400 customers have yet to move to the web.  They are still using green screen 5250 terminal based applications written in RPG.

I call these companies AS/400 companies and it really doesn't matter that they may be running the latest version of IBM i on IBM Power system computers.  The reality is they are stuck in 1987 or prior.

The real issue is customer and employee frustration or satisfaction.  In today's world of instant messaging, video conversations, movies about everything, and the ability for computers to connect to each other around the globe, to be stuck with a green screen menu based system with all of its training requirements and complexity is nuts.

Where is the benefit?  What is the cost of supporting these old systems?  What are you paying the RPG programmers that maintain these systems? 

Isn't it time to move into the 21st century?  Isn't it time for systems that work for you instead of holding you back? 

Visit us at www.rjcancilla.com and see how we can help.