Competition is central to the operation of markets, and fosters innovation, productivity and growth, all of which create wealth and reduce poverty. Yet things can conspire to drive out competition. Which is what we are experiencing today with the IBM iSeries. The number of experts with experience on the hardware is steadily reducing due at one end to the lack of new personnel coming on board since companies are increasingly deploying hosted and distributed solutions; and at the other end by the retirement by many of the personnel who originally developed and administered on these platforms. These together serve to drive out competition on prices and service levels.

Today in the UK there are only three competitors in the IBM ISeries space — IBM themselves, Bluechip an IT managed Service Specialist and IMS.

Hardware support services are rather like house insurance — always needed but often not reviewed until a problem focusses the mind. When the house burns down it is too late to review your insurance policy! Let IMS help you — we can’t give you a price comparison web site but we can offer a wide variety of levels of support that vary by hours and response times. We would be happy to help you with a comparison of our services with your existing services so that you can ensure you are getting the hardware support you need.

Free hardware review service — register here.