For every business today, digital transformation is imperative for surviving and thriving in the digital age. However, support for legacy technology will continue to be a factor because transformations are gradual, and become a mix of the old and the new. We see this specifically around the management of multi-cloud strategies. In a recent VMware and MIT Technology Review report that surveyed 1,300 IT leaders, 62 percent of respondents cited the integration of legacy systems as their biggest challenge in multi-cloud.

For the foreseeable future, the mainframe will continue to be a critical part of the business and operational growth of thousands of organizations that rely on mainframes with increasing workloads. That fact is borne out in the BMC Mainframe Research Report, showing that 91 percent of survey respondents predict that their mainframe workloads will continue to grow.

The central role of the iSeries for businesses, as well as the need to optimize its management, is constantly shown by numerous sources. According to the most recent IBM i Strategy and Roadmap, there are more than 150,000 companies worldwide utilizing the iSeries platform.

The IBM AS400 through the current IBM iSeries has been prized for performance, stability, and dependability for more than three decades and continues to serve countless businesses today. According to the market intelligence company iDatalabs, 28,148 companies are using the IBM AS400, but other sources peg the number as well over triple that figure.

If your business is running legacy IT systems—and chances are that it is—you know they can introduce a number of challenges for you and your staff. But more than just an annoyance, legacy systems eat into your bottom line, costing you money, alienating customers, and introducing security risks. Legacy IT is a form of technical debt not easily satisfied.  Here are just a few of the issues you may be facing.

Having discovered the advantages of the cloud, many enterprises are now taking a multicloud approach, implementing a mix of public, private, and hybrid cloud architectures in their efforts to make computing more efficient and available.

A 2017 report by CompTIA indicates that the demand for tech talent in the United States will continue to outpace the supply of workers. And among hiring employers, almost half (47 percent) expect hiring to be moderately or significantly more challenging this year.

More than half of IT professionals surveyed (53%) indicated that optimizing current cloud use is the top initiative in 2017. That number rises to 64 percent among mature cloud users. That’s largely because of the amount of wasted cloud spend, estimated at 30 percent by users and likely to run as much as 45 percent.

Because of the limitations of operating in either a dedicated or a public cloud environment, organizations are moving to a hybrid cloud solution to improve security, reduce costs, and find the best-fit solution for business challenges. But as the survey indicates, knowing where to direct resources for the greatest benefit isn’t easy—even for the most seasoned IT pro. That’s why many businesses are turning to cloud managed services.

According to CompTIA’s IT Industry Outlook 2017 report, there are five major factors contributing to a more challenging landscape for IT professionals in 2017. These factors are:

• Finding workers with expertise in emerging tech fields
• Competition for IT talent
• Finding workers with the right soft skills
• Rising salary expectations
• Insufficient pool of talent in region/locale

If you’re lacking the skills or technology to do something, you can either acquire those resources internally, which is an investment, or you can leverage outsourcing. By outsourcing, you leverage another company that already has those skills and resources available. From a company’s perspective, it’s looking at outsourcing as “do we have a competitive advantage to do it ourselves, or should we rely upon someone who does have the competitive advantage to do it?”

As a service provider, ticketing is really the backbone of First National Technology Solutions (FNTS). Any request that a customer inputs, or any alert that the company receives requires a ticket.

It’s important for customers to trust information which is shared with them, and First National Technology Solutions (FNTS) is setting the right expectation with clients as they’re coming on board. This is especially true in regards to Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

First National Technology Solution’s philosophy with customers focuses on really developing a long term relationship. In partnering with FNTS, customers are guaranteed a very high level of service, and one which continues to receive value throughout the life of their relationship.

The best way to add value is by giving customers access to the “best of breed” from a technology perspective. Doing so means providing the leading edge technology for customers to take advantage of in their operation. Going hand in hand with leading technology, is offering access to highly trained and skilled senior engineers, as well as delivering services in a very timely fashion.

When talking about capital expenditures, it helps to view them as investments. With that in mind, all investments should be considered carefully, and have a return. It’s typically something that you own, depreciates over a useful life, and is recorded as an asset on your balance sheet.

Service Desk Manager has helped First National Technology Solutions (FNTS) improve the process of service delivery, customer satisfaction, and reduce cost through automation.