Investing Wisely: Mainframe Excellence Over Crisis Management
The Challenge
The outsourcing provider for a large manufacturer struggled to deliver its mission-critical mainframe applications across multiple CECs while facing significant cost challenges. The end client was committed to the mainframe because of the transaction intensity of the environment and its massive investment into these applications.
Today, many providers struggle to find adequate mainframe talent as many experienced practitioners continue to age out of the workforce. Whatever resources are available must frequently focus on operations, to the exclusion of required upgrades or performance improvement project work. Often, there is a struggle for adequate resource for operations, let alone for any project without a clear ROI.
Whatever the root cause in this case, the outsourcer could not devote the required skills and methods to get the environment up to date and under control, jeopardizing the continuity of these mission-critical workloads.
First, Performance Management
The outsourcer initially engaged GTSG to execute a performance & workload management engagement. We conduct this rigorous process via a traditional consulting methodology: current state assessment, future state vision, gap analysis, and roadmap – brought to life by GTSG’s vast experience base, looking for any metrics that appear outside the norm.
After listing the opportunities, we catalogued them based on a straightforward risk/reward (“pain to implement vs. gain when it’s completed”) matrix, measured in the client’s terms (per hour, 24 hours, month, MIPS, or MSUs). We then assisted the outsourcer with implementation, including detailed instructions and backout required; IVP plans; outage requirements (IPL, Subsystem, None), and testing requirements, available throughout to assist the outsourcer.
Then, Dealing with the Root Issue: An Out-of-Date Environment
Early in the implementation, it became clear that some issues were related to its woefully out-of-date software stack. Even worse, the end client paid an enormous premium for this software past its support.
We also learned that the client’s disaster recovery program was inadequate in design and lacked rigorous and regular testing. GTSG leveraged our DR practice to solve both shortcomings – skills rooted in our mainframe expertise and the experience that began in earnest with our deep involvement in post-9/11 resiliency program remediation efforts.
The outsourcer asked us to assemble a team to modernize the environment systematically. Our team incorporated up to eight SMEs working on various issues – a requirement given the complexity of the integrations built over decades.
Results
Our provider (and the provider’s client) benefitted from
- the replacement of out-of-support hardware
- bringing the software up to supported levels across 12 LPARS in three data centers, migrating multiple instances of
- 9 to 12, and
- multiple instances of z/OS 1.12 to 2.5
- the design, implementation, and testing a new DR environment
while training the outsourcer’s offshore team during the process.
Bottom line: the provider retains the account to this day; customer-facing applications continue to deliver; the client environment is effective; the offshore team has been trained.