In 2025, downtime is much more than an inconvenience. It’s a liability with costly implications. According to the 2024 ITIC Hourly Costs of Downtime Report, 90% of organizations report that downtime costs them over $300,000 per hour, and for 1 in 5, that figure exceeds $5 million. In today’s digital-first economy, businesses simply can’t afford to go offline.
Customers expect a seamless experience, meaning a single disruption can not only derail active transactions but also erode trust and send would-be buyers to competitors. Maintaining a stable, resilient IT infrastructure is a strategic advantage – and no platform embodies that reliability better than IBM i.
What Makes IBM i so Reliable?
What are the key factors behind IBM i’s reputation for reliability? Let’s take a closer look at the foundational elements that contribute to its consistent performance.
IBM Power Server Resiliency: The IBM i operating system is designed to run on IBM Power servers – a market leader among industrial servers in terms of uptime and total cost of ownership. The ITIC 2024 Global Server Hardware, Server OS Reliability Report found that 89% of IBM Power10 server enterprises achieved eight nines—99.999999%—of uptime. This equates to 315 milliseconds of unplanned, per server, per annum outage time due to underlying system flaws or component failures – and less than one cent per server/per year spent performing remediations due to unplanned server outages.
Integrated Architecture: Aside from being built on such resilient hardware, the IBM i operating system itself is renowned for its reliability and continuity. IBM i uses an integrated architecture, meaning the operating system, middleware, and applications have all been designed to integrate with one another seamlessly. By reducing the level of friction between individual components, IBM i’s design significantly reduces the potential for disruptions.
Securability: IBM i is a highly securable platform. Administrators have the ability to customize a wide variety of key security configurations, such as password settings, user permissions, system values, exit programs, and even some multifactor authentication functionality. When properly implemented, IBM i’s built-in security features offer a solid foundation for protecting against both internal and external threats.
Excellent Disaster Recovery Options: Even on a platform as reliable as IBM i, there is always potential for an outage to occur. High availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR) protect your organization from the threat of downtime and data loss in the event of a disaster. The market for HA/DR solutions supporting IBM i is well-rounded and even includes native tools, so IBM i users can rest assured that there is a solution that fits their disaster recovery needs.
Trust in IBM i Continues to Grow
There’s a reason why so many organizations have remained on IBM i (AS/400) since its inception in the 80’s. The platform is a picture of stability. Even in an era where competition among operating systems is abundant and interest in moving the application to the cloud is ever-growing, trust and satisfaction among IBM i users has never been higher.
This is supported by the record-high 96% of IBM i Marketplace Survey respondents that believe their IBM i server gives them a better ROI than other operating systems. In fact, IBM i users are so happy with the operating system’s reliability and scalability that the percentage of those planning to increase their IBM i footprint jumped from 12% in 2024 to 20% in 2025.
Maximize IBM i Uptime Event Further
Fortra is home to some of the world’s top IBM i experts (including seven active IBM Champions) – some of whom play an active role in developing products for IBM, such as BRMS and PowerHA. From cybersecurity to operations to analytics, our team understands the full potential of this powerful operating system. Schedule a demonstration with one of our experts to see how Fortra’s solutions can help you get the most out of your IBM i.
