IBM i (AS400 / iSeries) Services

Award-winning business critical IBM i application development, support, maintenance & consultancy

Since 2009, we have been designing, developing, supporting and maintaining innovative and scalable business critical applications for organisations large and small across the UK and Europe.

Your organisation can take advantage of many years of knowledge, insight and experience helping businesses across multiple industry sectors improve efficiency, drive operational performance and reduce costs.

Our team of 40-plus UK-based IBM i developers provides day-to-day project management, consultancy, analysis, development and support skills which will help you to retain all that is good about the IBM i.

Working in partnership with you, we can either work as part of your existing team, create entire applications for you, develop a proof of concept or kick start a particular project.

Regardless of whether it is PHP, Java, RPG, DB2, HTML, JavaScript, jQuery, AJAX, JSON, CSS, web services or COBOL we understand what technologies will deliver the very best possible solution for your business, whatever the challenge.

Our IBM i services include, but are not limited to:

• Advice on the best approaches to take
• Multi-platform application development, support, consultancy and maintenance using PHP, Node.js, Java, JavaScript, jQuery, AJAX, HTML, JSON, RPG, DB2, COBOL and CSS
• Web services integration with other platforms, extending your IBM i based ERP software and many more
• Developing mobile applications and responsive web applications on the IBM i, or creating web-enabled green screen applications that are also mobile-optimised
• Modernise existing RPG and COBOL applications to deliver a modern web-based GUI
• Coaching and training staff so they can take over the development going forward
• Managing and supporting existing applications on the IBM i
• Ongoing remote support for developers.

Proximity is a partner for Fresche Solutions, BCD Software, Quadrant Software, Infor, Zend and Raz-Lee Security amongst others.

We are a vendor member of i-UG, the only independent user group in the UK dedicated solely to the IBM i and POWER platforms. We are a regular presenter at i-UG events.

IBM i (AS400 / iSeries) Discovery Services

Our IBM i specialists can help you make the most of the benefits of your IBM i so you can leverage your existing  investment to ensure maximum business advantage.

Proving an opportunity for external assessment of your IBM i environment, our Discovery Services help you to improve the effectiveness of your IT ecosystem. The programme can help you match IT and software functions to changes in your business requirements and strategy.

Working with your key stakeholders, we’ll deliver documented findings covering:

• The current state of your business, identify business drivers and explore current IT and IBM i strategy
• An inventory of current code base by type and application area (if applicable)
• Analysis of databases and application interfaces
• A technology road map
• Areas for better system and software operation
• Scope for enhancements in your IBM i ecosystem.

 

IBM i (AS400 / iSeries) Support & Maintenance

Are your IBM i business applications no longer supported? Do you have bespoke applications developed in-house or by third-parties that you can no longer maintain?

With a team of over 40 UK-based IBM i developers and specialists we can provide you with a flexible and tailored support and maintenance options to meet you businesses needs, extend the life of your existing IBM i applications, mitigate the risks associated with unsupported applications and ensure business continuity.

Our IBM i specialists can provide anything from a technical help desk to system monitoring, additional staff resources to a fully managed service – and everything in between.

We can carry out support and maintenance at your premises, remotely or a combination of the two.

Our support and maintenance services enable you to free up valuable IT resources, therefore allowing you to focus on other business functions with complete peace of mind.

 

IBM i (AS400 / iSeries) staff resources

Finding the right staff to maintain, support and develop your IBM i applications can be difficult.

According to the latest IBM i Marketplace Survey results from HelpSystems, the lack staff with IBM i skills is ranked amongst companies top four concerns at 44.3%.

When skilled IBM i developers retire, or move onto another company, they take their technical knowledge with them, leaving organisation’s business-critical applications at risk. The lack of skilled resources can also mean that critical IBM i development and modernisation projects are delayed, or, in some cases postponed or cancelled.

Proximity can provide highly skilled and experienced IBM i specialists to help you bridge those skills gaps.

We can tailor our service to meet your needs – everything from supplementing your existing IT team; additional resource to kick start or complete a development project; or providing support on a contract basis.

 

IBM i (AS400 / iSeries) Application Services

Whether you are looking for the right IBM i development tools, some additional resources to help kick start or complete a project, or want Proximity to manage the whole project, we have unrivalled experience in:

Bespoke business applications: IBM i & multi-platform application development

Whatever the challenge, Proximity can design and build business critical IBM i or multi-platform business applications using technologies such as PHP, Java, JavaScript, jQuery, AJAX, HTML, JSON, CSS or RPG.

Application maintenance can either be managed by your programmers, or Proximity can handle that as well.

Mobile business applications: mobile App & responsive web applications

With the proliferation of mobile devices, it is increasingly important to provide access to business applications regardless of location or device.

We have experience of developing mobile applications, responsive web applications or creating web-enabled green screen applications that are also mobile-optimised.

Web GUI for green screens: web-based GUI for 5250 green screens

Proximity can help you bring your existing 5250 green screen applications to the web.

We can modernise existing RPG and COBOL applications to deliver a modern web-based GUI while at the same time customise emulated screens to include advanced functionality.

With PHP on the IBM i, we can develop new functions or rewrite existing ones which are blended with the 5250 functions which all run in a single browser session with no tabbing, launching or navigating required.

Download the whitepaper to find out more about how a modern GUI for IBM i can help you drive revenue, increase competitive advantage & delight end users.

Open source applications on the IBM i

Since IBM and Zend first introduced PHP to the IBM i in 2006 the open source language has become the most popular choice for web and mobile development on the IBM i platform. The introduction of Node.js in 2014 has added another powerful language to the open source stable on the IBM i.

Not only do Proximity design, build and maintain innovative and scalable business-critical web applications for organisations large and small across Europe and beyond, we also provide a number of tools to help developers working on the IBM i to create powerful open source applications.

Business Intelligence: visualise data & make better business decisions

Having access to relevant business KPI’s can help organisations of any size make better decisions. Whether it is identifying and exploiting opportunities for growth, mitigating risks or managing day-to-day operations business intelligence (BI) tools can be invaluable.

Confronted with screen after screen of data, it can be difficult for businesses to sift through and find the meaningful and actionable. Dashboards, web reports and queries can provide organisations with real-time, web-based visual picture of your business.

Developed so that they can be accessed from a browser on any device (desktop, tablet or mobile), we design BI tools so you can view a quick snapshot and drill down into specific data sets.