Justification to upgrade

["Graap, Ken" <keg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I went to the IBM announcement yesterday and learned about the impressive
new iSeries line.

Our business is still being run on our old Model 730 8-way with a 1510
interactive feature. 1/2 our disk is PCI, 1/2 is still the older SPD
technology.

I was shocked to hear that the upgrade path from a 7XX to an 8XX system goes
away in October 2003!

My task is to convince management that it makes business sense to spend
money and upgrade to the new product line.

We don't really have a performance case either. Our current system is
actually a little under utilized because we bought the largest machine we
could afford a few years ago to prepare for the migration of our mainframe
applications to the iSeries along with a new implementation of Lawson. This
additional load didn't turn out to be as much as we thought it might be.

In fact, we only use about 25-30% of the available CPU processing power on a
regular basis. It is nice to have an average interactive transaction
response time of .20 seconds though, but it doesn't help my case!

Anyway, I was wondering if any of you would like to share some thoughts on
some advantages for upgrading to new iSeries technology as it becomes
available. I have a feeling that it will be a hard sell convincing
management that it makes business sense to spend money in this tight
economy, for an upgrade when system capacity isn't an issue. 

thanx in advance for all your input.

Kenneth
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Kenneth  E.  Graap
IBM Certified Specialist
AS/400 Professional
System Administrator
NW Natural - Information Services
System Services
Phone 503 226 4211 X5537
FAX   603 849 0591
keg@nwnatural.com
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