2017 marks a significant year for Shield Advanced Solutions, our 20th year in operation in Canada. Shield Advanced is a private Limited company created by founder and owner Chris Hird.
From a long history in IT, in particular the mid-range system arena. Chris was the leading IBM consultant and prime expert at IBM Havant for the AS/400 and MSS – Multiple System Software. A newly developed strategy of using two systems to mirror the data, was developed by Guy Dehond in the 1980s. MSS was later sold to Lakeview and became an integral component within the Mimix product.
Through various roles, across the platform, Chris has amassed a huge and varied experience of under-the-cover operations of the system, giving him an extra-ordinary advantage over most, as a good all-round software engineer and programmer, the result has allowed him to become well versed in most aspects of the AS/400 – rare in any IT field.
Shield Advanced was launched in 1997, and its first software solution launched – JT4i (previously known as JobQGenie). A unique software product that addresses the area of capturing Job Tracking. Even today JT4i remains the leading solution for tracking the content of IBM i job queues as submitted jobs run through their life cycle. Understanding this information can greatly improve system recovery capabilities. JT4i works alongside Shield’s High Availability solution HA4i as well as other HA products on the market.
From the start, Chris Hird and the Shield corporation had a clear vision and philosophy: to produce non-complex, simple solutions. Software and products that can be installed by most IT in-house shops, and once implemented remain simple to use and maintain with ease.
In 2006 Shield introduced to the market, a ground-breaking and surprisingly simple High Availability solution – HA4i (previously known as RAP/400). Chris Hird, having assisted clients with other available solutions, was determined to create a more simplistic approach to achieve the same or better results than other solutions available on the market. HA4i is an enterprise level solution available to SMB organizations. The outstanding and continued success of Shield, and Shield products, over the last 20 years, speaks for itself.