When you're deciding whether or not to upgrade your AS/400 or iSeries box to a new model, do you consider the cost of not doing an upgrade?

Is the performance of your applications seemingly slowing down? Is the load from additional end users causing your system to play catch-up? Then, you need to consider the lost productivity of not upgrading.

For example, if you double the performance of your system, you could potentially save 25 to 50 percent of your users' wait time. So, in an eight-hour day, you could save up to four hours of work per person per day, depending on the applications and workloads. Often, you could save even more.

If you have 100 users each earning $15 hour ($12,000 per day), this means that simply upgrading your existing system to a better-performing machine could save you $3,000 to $6,000 per day. Of course, you can adjust that figure accordingly, depending on your average hourly wage and your number of users.

For this example, let's take the low end of these estimated productivity gains and use $3,000 per day as the basis for additional calculations: $3,000 per day equals $15,000 per week. At 50 weeks per year (can't forget vacation/holiday time), you get $750,000 per year in productivity gains by upgrading the machine. Which equates to $1,500,000 over the two-year life cycle of a system before it is obsolete (technologically speaking).

So along with the other benefits to your organization--such as batch jobs completing in half to a quarter of the time and enhanced functionality (Web service, communications, email support, etc.)--you'll get a potential productivity gain that in just hard dollars could pay for all or a substantial portion of the upgrade costs.

So when considering whether or not you should upgrade your old AS/400 or iSeries or even move to a new model, be sure you take into consideration the benefit and savings that result from enhanced productivity of your end users.