Our technical department is asked a wide range of questions and a common theme is whether an organization should upgrade an older product or just buy a new one. When it comes to older iSeries environments running V5R4, it is recommended to buy new for three key reasons:
1. Lack of Support – IBM no longer supports V5R4 and in most cases these older systems cannot be upgraded to higher release levels. This can cause quite a bit of frustration when you run into issues.
2. Higher Support and Maintenance Costs – Because the vendor doesn’t support these older systems any longer, software support and hardware maintenance can be significantly more expensive than with newer systems.
3. Lower Purchase Price – In most cases, it costs less money to upgrade to the new IBM Power + processor. The 3-year hardware and software warranty that is built in is an added bonus.
When making a decision like this, you should always carefully weigh all your options. However, in this case, moving to the newer platform provides more advantages than disadvantages, and with the right technology partner, the transition can be seamless and the return on investment can be high. Check this out if you want to learn more about IBM i and how it can be set up with pureflex.
