Hardware & Software

Hardware supply was the basis on which we and many other companies in the 1980s established our businesses. At the time, the IBM mainframe was king and it was probably true to say that the lion’s share of most transactions was for the purchase of the hardware with the software accounting for a relatively small proportion of the total outlay. How times have changed!

The anomaly here is that whilst the hardware has decreased in value many times, the current ranges of machines are actually more complicated to configure now than before! Additional care in building and verifying machine configuration is essential as any mistake can prove to be very costly! For this reason, we prefer to check everything fully before finally offering to supply.

As part of the service, if possible we prefer to supply Software Maintenance, Licensed Programme products and Hardware Maintenance with any processor we supply. In this way, we are able to provide a single point of contact for all the services required and the same point of contact for the renewal of any of these services at the appropriate time.

Obviously, as well as any major processor upgrade, we can supply interim upgrades of additional disk, main storage and features. We are also able to advise whether any equipment supplied will have an effect on the cost of maintenance of the system.

Traditionally, most peripheral devices we’ve supplied have been coaxially (mainframe) or twinaxially (AS/400 mid-range) attached. This is now changing as access to most systems is now via Local Area Network (LAN). This was one of the reasons we became a distributor for the I-O Corporation range of connectivity products and we have found that this offers a cost-efficient and reliable method of retaining installed equipment. Please see the separate page where you will find details of some of the I-O Corp’s range, which we hope will be of interest.

We supply new and used IBM and OEM/PCM printers and can still dig up the occasional used twinax terminal, when required to replace a failed system console.

As we are predominantly a hardware sales organisation, we do not have a software portfolio. However, we have been able to offer our customers savings benefits through supplying IBM’s licensed programme products, such as Websphere Development Studio, Client Access, Query, SQL etc., via IBM’s Proof of Entitlement (PoE) paperwork which enables the resale of these products. IBM has realised that this scheme has started to impact on its own sales and has limited the use of PoEs to OS/400 V5R2 and they can no longer be used from i5/OS (OS/400 V5R3) onwards.

We have partnered with one of IBM’s main iSeries Business Partners in the supply of the High Availability software, MiMiX. Whilst Interchange’s experience of the product is not extensive, we have the basic knowledge and full support necessary to provide details from quotation to implementation stages.