First Option Inc. offers a fully integrated cloud accounting suite, a centralized IBM i monitoring tool, IBM i application hosting and disaster recovery services. With offices in Boston and Phoenix, First Option serves customers in industries such as financial services, telecommunications, nonprofit, retail and legal.
The main goal was to implement robust security best practices and establish solid governance for process changes in the security area. The company aimed to standardize and comply with SOX regulations, control access and publication to reinforce perimeter security, deploy AWS WAF and Amazon GuardDuty, and apply the principle of least privilege across all services. Objectives included enhancing security posture, reducing operational risks, and ensuring traceability, compliance, and incident response capability within a heterogeneous and business-critical infrastructure.
The primary challenge was to improve and standardize security practices in a regulated, high-demand environment. Key tasks included implementing security best practices, governing process changes in the security area, meeting SOX compliance requirements, controlling access and publication for strengthened perimeter security, and adopting technologies such as AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall ) and Amazon GuardDuty. Additionally, the company sought to enforce the least privilege principle for all services, guaranteeing minimum necessary access for each user or system.
Provided hosting services
Collaboration to develop IBM i Watchdog monitoring tool
Continue to grow relationship year after year
It didn’t take long for First Option to discover Netrix Global (previously Ricoh ITS). Netrix provides a wide range of managed services for IBM i Power Systems™ servers including AS/400, iSeries and System i.
A partnership quickly followed. Netrix took over managing First Option’s data centers and soon after, First Option shifted the management of its production and development centers to Netrix as well.
The big leap forward in the relationship came when First Option asked Netrix to take a look at an IBM i monitoring tool it was developing. First Option envisioned a simple, cost-effective dashboard that made the power of iSeries functionality more readily accessible to users with varying levels of training and in many different environments. First Option also wanted a dashboard that alerted users to only the essential things they needed to know via email alerts when those issues became imminent.
First Option and Netrix collaborated to develop IBM i Watchdog by First Option—a centralized IBM i (iSeries, AS 400) monitoring solution. This monitoring tool provides a user-friendly interface for key system health threshold alert definitions, day, time and duration to suspend monitoring to accommodate scheduled maintenance, customized email groups for routing information and inquiry messages to a pre-defined support team. Netrix hosts the central server for IBM i Watchdog.
“You can drop Ricoh (now Netrix) into any situation and they can quickly figure it out,” said Fuller. “They have the depth of knowledge because they’ve dealt with it all. I consider Ricoh (now Netrix) a part of First Option.”
IBM i Watchdog started off as a basic monitoring tool used with 10 clients but has evolved over time to its current fourth generation version, adding more types of configurations and requirements depending on the needs of First Option’s customers. Today, this tool is used to monitor more than 70 systems around the world. And with Ricoh’s capability to support Windows and networking environments, First Option has been able to gain traction with larger environments and larger clients.
“We process millions of transactions a week with IBM i Watchdog,” said Fuller. “Ricoh (now Netrix) worked with us to make this tool very scalable so we were able to grow.” As the relationship has evolved, so too has First Option’s reliance on Netrix for the infrastructure to handle the increasingly SaaS side of the business. Netrix has also been an integral partner to First Option as it expanded its financial offerings with a fully integrated cloud accounting suite. Bottom line, First Option customers know they have a reliable team and IT infrastructure that allows them to focus on their core business. “We’ve never experienced downtime with Ricoh (now Netrix), even when a hurricane came through,” said Fuller.
Ability to attract larger clients
They have never experienced downtime
Fixed costs for simplified accounting
Expanded partnership to start an IBM i networking collaborative
First Option just signed a two-year extension contract with Netrix and is planning to add a development back-up site at a secure data center in Minnesota. Netrix offers both dedicated and cloud-based high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) solutions to help protect IBM i Power System environments from data loss.
Today, Netrix handles all of the hardware service on the First Option system, manages its infrastructure, mans its call center, conducts full back-ups and performs other operational functions. While technically behind the scenes to its customers, First Option knows Netrix has been an integral partner for much of its progress—providing and managing the backbone IT infrastructure to help them grow and succeed.
Both Netrix and First Option understand that each of their businesses serve different functions in the IT world. And it works perfectly, with each complementing the other. On many occasions, Netrix has even recommended First Option to its clients that need development work.
On the cost side of the partnership, not having to purchase equipment or IBM customer support has been a big advantage. First Option leases its hardware from Netrix and has just one set monthly cost to pay. “We really don’t want to be on the hardware side of things because that’s not our focus,” said Fuller. “This is something we’ve been able to leverage well with Ricoh (now Netrix).”
When Fuller moved to Arizona, he sensed the absence of a users group in the area for IBM i. That sparked talks between First Option and Netrix of working together to start an IBM i networking collaborative in Phoenix where users could feed off one another, share interests and talk about what’s going on with the technology.
