CU*Answers, the Grand Rapids, Michigan-based cooperative CUSO, is working closely with technicians at IBM to prepare for the migration of its online core processing servers to IBM’s latest POWER8 technology later this year. Currently, CU*Answers supports nearly two hundred online credit unions on an IBM POWER7 foundation.

According to Scott Collins, the liaison to IBM and CUSO Vice President: “Our teams have begun the planning process with our partners at IBM according to the schedule we developed over a year ago. We are very proud of our track record of continuous operations for our online credit unions, and leveraging the newest IBM technology has been a significant part of that success for more than two decades. The fact that we are able to migrate our online environment to POWER8 servers without disruption gives us a tremendous amount of flexibility. We are able to schedule the deployment at the optimum time in our business year, and do so cost-effectively.”

Collins continued: “We have been working closely with the IBM teams to plan for a system that will meet our growth requirements and our business development strategies. Since the IBMi operating environment running on POWER8 will give us virtually unlimited growth potential, we are able to choose a migration path that best meets our strategic technology plan.”