“Source Data gave me the best value Power i – I avoided $42,100 extra printer costs and reduced our IBM support costs $7,763 per year.”
“My name is Jerome Stillions and I am the IS Manager of T.I.S. Group in Bloomington, Indiana. I would like to share with you some of the steps and insights I had to reduce some of my company’s IT costs. My hope is that you can learn from some of the successful strategies I used.
“T.I.S. began in 1962 as a family-run academic publishing and textbook distribution business called Tichenor Institutional Services. Over the years the company name became just the initials. T.I.S. made its reputation providing inexpensive quality college textbooks. As T.I.S. expanded, our business grew to include a wider range of college bookstore products to sportswear imprinting and custom publishing.
“By 2006, T.I.S. Group supported 200 employees with 60 users on an IBM 9406-820 at our corporate location. It was about this time I began thinking about upgrading my AS400.
“We have a tendency, as long as I have been with the company, to wear our hardware out. Typically, when we get an AS400, we get 7-10 years out of a box.
“I always tell my boss when I ask for resources, I always spend the company’s money like it’s my own. So I try to look at projects and suppliers in all aspects.
I Found Source Data Products Newsletter Educational And A Valuable Resource
“Although I had been dealing with several IBM Business Partners in Indianapolis over the years, I recall it was about 2006 that I started to get newsletters from Source Data Products. I found the information I got from Source Data was very educational.
“I would always learn a few tips from them. Basically, when we got closer to our upgrade to the new IBM POWER i (AS400), the information I picked up from the Source Data newsletters was always very helpful.
I Found The Source Data Newsletters Easy-To-Understand With Facts And Insight Not Found Elsewhere
“I found the Source Data newsletter explained important things about the AS400 in laymen’s terms so it was easy to understand.
“For example, one of the things I personally learned from the newsletters was how the number of disk drives affected the overall POWER i performance far more than the rated processor speed. Source Data even backed up this point with IBM documents and independent performance tests. When I made my final decision about what POWER i to select, it turns out the number of disk drives was actually a valuable consideration.
“Of all the IBM Business Partners we dealt with over the POWER i upgrade project, only Source Data explained how the server’s performance was related to the number of disk drives instead of the processor speed. To me, that was a big benefit.
Source Data Took The Time To Learn About My Company And Fully Explain My Choices
“As I recall, Source Data was the only IBM Business Partner that took the time to truly get to know my environment. I remember telling them about our business, our operation, our application programs, and our peripherals – right down to the four Twinax IBM 6400 printers we have in our warehouse. I sincerely felt Source Data understood what we were doing so as we talked to each other over the years it made it super easy for me to relate to how IBM AS400 options would best fit T.I.S.
“When we finally got down to the POWER i, I genuinely felt I was prepared to understand what the various IBM Business Partners were presenting. It became pretty clear that Source Data had the best value for us.
Competing IBM Business Partners Tried To Oversell Me More AS400 Than We Really Need
“One IBM Business Partner had proposed a server that was much bigger than we needed. This P10 server included 2 active cores, a tape auto-loader, POWER VM software, unlimited users, and a UPS three times the size we needed. I could tell from the Source Data newsletters and correspondence with Bob Losey that this server was far more than what we needed. It was also the most expensive proposal. Like, well over $120,000!
“A second IBM Business Partner proposed a P05 server. On the surface, this looked pretty good. But it included 2 active cores. As Source Data pointed out, even with about 8000 CPW this 2-core server offered, with only 6 disk units we would only get about 900 CPW. So the extra active core was an added expense with no real benefit and made the IBM software support twice as expensive.
Source Data Gave Me The Best Value POWER i – I Avoided $42,100 Extra Printer Costs And Reduced Our IBM Support Costs $7,763 Per Year
“Source Data showed us how the P05 POWER i server with 1 active core, 40 users, 4MM tape drive, and an appropriately sized UPS more than satisfied our performance and capacity needs at the lowest price.
“Source Data pointed out that our data files were not that large and that the 4MM tape backup had more than enough capacity to handle our daily saves. That tip worked out great. We saved $2,000 on the tape drive and about $50 on every tape compared to the cost of LTO tape media.
“I remember we still had to accommodate at least four IBM 6400 Twinax IPDS shuttle matrix printers in the warehouse and Source Data helped us get the Ethernet-to-Twinax controller. I figure that controller saved us $42,100 if we had to replace them with new IP printers.
“We had been annually spending about $3,100 on hardware maintenance and $7,700 if we had stayed on software maintenance for our 9406-820. Our new POWER i cut our annual hardware maintenance down to $1,331 and our software support to $1,706. That’s a $7,763 savings every year.
POWER i – Painless Transition And Tremendous Performance – 1 Hour 20 Minute Job Now Runs Under 13 Minutes
“The new POWER i has been a good box for us. We have not had any issues. Going through this process with Source Data Products made this upgrade pretty painless. Everything has been perfect.
“We saw a tremendous difference in speed with the new POWER i. We got good feedback from our users when the POWER i went live. They noticed quicker response times on reports and screen queries.
“A pretty intensive monthly database update of 495,000 text book titles in our inventory used to take about 1 hour and 20 minutes on our 9406-820. Now it takes less than 13 minutes to do that same update. We used to have to run this after hours. There was no way we could pull our users off line to run this job. Now we know if we get in a bind we can run this during the lunch hour.
New Java Capabilities Helped Our Amazon Business And Our B2B Web Site
“This POWER i came in with V6R1. Our 9406-820 had been on V5R3. So we were limited with several of our Java programs that exchange data with Amazon. Amazon had changed some of their security features and settings. The new POWER i had the OS level we needed to run the newest Java programs to properly work with Amazon. Our top Java programmer is extremely excited about the additional programming capabilities with this OS400 version.
“We also host a web-site on this POWER i…our new B2B web site for our college textbook customers. We have just upgraded to a new version of this software. It’s just running tremendous. We could not have made this leap without the POWER i and V6R1.
I Recommend Source Data – They Are Very Knowledgeable, Everything Fell Into Place, And They Saved Us $49,063 In The First Year of Operation
“I would definitely recommend Source Data Products. My experience with Source Data was very educational. It was a learning process during the evaluation. They know their stuff. The knowledge and the things Source Data brought forth in our discussion were extremely valuable. I never had the feeling Source Data would just sell me a box and be done with it.
“I never felt pressured to buy anything. I felt I was able to explore many options and express my ideas on various approaches. I always felt I was getting a great education before I was ever committed to buy a thing.
“I know it took months of planning. Everything fell right in place and Source Data Products saved us a lot of money. I can’t think how it could have gone any better.”