Less Expensive Than An IBM POWER i. More Flexible Than A Capital Expenditure. Knowledgeable, Attentive Service. Improved Performance.
Background
Ken Hatton operates Hatton Insurance as the IT service provider for United Agribusiness League (UAL).
UAL provides healthcare for agribusinesses. Since the creation of the non-profit United Agricultural Benefit Trust (UABT) health care plan in 1983, approximately 700,000 individuals have received the benefits connected with this association-sponsored plan. Simply put, that is a lot of IT administration.
Hatton Insurance ran their IBM 9406-270 on OS400 V5R4, 4 GB of memory, and 176 GB disk capacity with 75% disk utilization. Hatton’s insurance administration program supports 40 local users and 50 remote users in 10 offices throughout California and Mexico.
Cloud Computing? I Was Skeptical At First…Then I Became A Believer.
Ken first heard about Cloud400 in February 2012. “I was extremely concerned about the security of my data and HIPAA compliance. That was my original thought back then. Then I got to thinking the Cloud400 guys could probably take better care of the OS400 system than I could.
“The Cloud400 team explained how my data is secure and how they satisfy HIPAA compliance. The fact that they had several other clients in banking and healthcare also made me feel comfortable that Cloud400 is secure.
“As I learned more about Cloud400, I realized I could get the Cloud400 team to handle my backups and keep OS400 current. From my standpoint, this is a valuable benefit. With the advances of the IBM OS400, the networking and connectivity and web-based issues, it takes the technical burden off my shoulders. It’s really hard to stay current on all these collaborative technologies.”
Cloud400 – Less Expensive Than An IBM On-Premise Server With More Flexibility Than A Capital Expense
Ken continues, “It also made sense financially for us to move to Cloud400. When I looked at the Cloud400 costs, it was a much better value than buying or leasing a new IBM POWER i server.
“With Cloud400, I have the flexibility to opt out in three years. I avoid a major capital expenditure and it’s more cost-effective to pay-as-you-go rather than buying a new IBM server.
“If healthcare goes gangbusters, I know with Cloud400 I can easily scale.”
Free Cloud400 Trial
Ken concludes, “Based on all of these advantages, I decided to try the free Cloud400 test. We overnighted a backup tape in a secure lockbox to be restored to a Cloud400 logical partition (LPAR) dedicated to us.”
Knowledgeable, Attentive Technical Service
“Your Cloud400 team was phenomenal. Darren really knows his stuff. Every time I talked to Bob Hall about network and VPN connections, he would get right back to me. Initially, my iPhone and iPad would not connect. It turns out the fix was very simple — Bob just had to create new user profiles in the Cloud400 firewall. Problem solved.
“Another time I found if I logged in one profile that I could not log in that same profile with another computer. Bob Hall explained to me that this is a Microsoft deal. Bob said the only way around this is with multiple user IDs. Bob said, ‘Give me the user IDs and passwords and you will have the connections within an hour.’ Sure enough, an hour later I got an e-mail from Bob that the multi-user issue was resolved. He fixed that issue with more firewall user profiles.
“I am so happy we went with Cloud400. In the past, I did my own installations of OS400, applied PTFs and version upgrades, all of that stuff. I now realize I am nowhere near the level of expertise of your OS400 professionals who support Cloud400. That’s just fine with me.
“While I know what all that technology does to make it easier for users to work with screens, connectivity and mobility, the technology ‘hidden behind the simplicity’ is far more complex than our users can imagine. That’s why I’m glad Cloud400 is now supporting my system.”
Better Performance
“Since we’ve gone to Cloud400, we have also seen performance improvements. We had a nightly job that now runs 25 minutes faster and our users have noticed the increase in response time. That’s a bonus in itself.”
Cloud400 Is Like What We Already Offer Our Clients
“Our UAL CEO was at a conference prior to our migration and announced, ‘We’re going to The Cloud.’ An attendee approached our CEO and asked, ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ When he told me about the incident, I said, ‘Well, look at it this way, our outer offices are already in a cloud environment because they are all remote to the system here in Irvine. So, what’s the difference if our server is now in Minnesota?’ Our CEO responded, ‘Good point. No real change.’ Neither one of us saw a problem moving to Cloud400.
“I think a lot of non-technical people are not knowledgeable of the unique, reliable design of OS400. Instead, they group OS400 in the same category as all cloud computing, which is primarily Windows and UNIX-based. They hear the horror stories about cloud companies losing service, having unexpected instability, or getting security breaches without understanding how OS400 has built in reliability and security to avoid these issues. With Cloud400, we don’t have these problems.”
Scalable. Secure. A Big Marketing Plus For Us.
“When I explained to our Vice President of sales about moving to Cloud400, he said, ‘Scalable? Secure? I can sell the crap out of that.’
“Our VP of sales came from the third-party administration world where the employer manages the healthcare plan. You work with a company like ours and we handle the administration for you. So he’s thinking of the bigger companies out there – 500, 1000, 2000+ size groups. You need to have your act together when you go out and try to land the big fish. It is far more relevant in today’s marketplace to say we have leading edge technology with our system in “The Cloud” at a secure, business-class data center. So, Cloud400 is a big plus for him too.”