2 Blue Hill Plaza Pearl River, NY 10965

www.bluehilldata.com 845-620-0400

Mainframe Outsourcing Primer

Mainframe Outsourcing – An Introduction

The following is a basic summary addressing a typical small to mid-size mainframe hosting engagement (20 to 500 MIPS). Many mainframe users are looking to reduce their costs while others are looking for a way to assure ongoing system support for the mainframe in the face of fewer and older mainframe staff resources. Blue Hill’s job is to leverage the resources we have to the greatest extent possible to achieve the greatest cost savings possible, while assuring that technical and operational support is available for as long as the mainframe is in service at your company.

Hardware The primary components of the hardware involved in a mainframe hosting engagement are the CPU (processor), DASD (disk storage) and tape drives. Blue Hill provides all three components:

You are given one or more dedicated LPARs of an appropriate size (MIPS) on one of Blue Hill’s CPUs. For example, if your current CPU is 150 MIPS, Blue Hill will give you a dedicated LPAR of 150 MIPS. Or, you may have two LPARs; production and test, totaling 150 MIPS. Note that one way to reduce your cost is to reduce your MIPS. So if your current CPU is not 100% utilized at peak times, you may be able to use an LPAR with fewer MIPS than you have now. LPARs are not shared with other customers.

You currently store data on a storage device (DASD) that is attached to your mainframe. You may have 500 GB, 1 TB or even 5 TB of DASD. Blue Hill provides any amount of DASD that you need on one of our storage devices. You can purchase additional DASD in small increments as your need for storage grows.

You probably have a tape library consisting of one or more tape drives and tape formats (3480, 3490, 3590, etc). Your production work requires a maximum number of concurrent tape mounts to process effectively. As part of Blue Hill’s solution, we relocate your tape library to our data center and provide the tape drives necessary to read your tapes and mount them as needed. If you currently use Virtual Tape Subsystem (VTS) or Automatic Tape Library (ATL) technology, Blue Hill will move your tapes into our VTS/ATL. If you don’t currently use VTS/ATL technology, we may be able to improve performance by moving your tape into ours. We also provide off-site tape rotation used for disaster recovery.

Software (IBM and 3rd party) Blue Hill will license the same IBM software stack you have now and load it into your LPAR on a Blue Hill mainframe. Blue Hill pays for the IBM software. You will retain your 3rd party software licenses and continue to pay for them. By keeping the 3rd party software contracts you already have in place, we avoid any added costs of re-acquiring software. There may be some exceptions to this 3rd party rule. Blue Hill has several 3rd party licenses already in place that may allow you to drop your license. We may have other 3rd party software products that can replace products you currently use. All these decisions will be discussed and the best solution identified. For those 3rd party licenses that you keep, Blue Hill will sign a facilities management agreement with the 3rd party vendor, giving Blue Hill permission to run your licensed software on our mainframe, as long as the size of your LPAR corresponds with your software license. This is standard practice in our industry.

Blue Hill does not require you to run any specific IBM or ISV software; you continue to run as you are now. Blue Hill will notify you if we can offer any software that helps with functionality or cost and you decide if you would like to implement any of those options.

Although you are now on a hosted mainframe, you can still go to new releases of software as you see fit. This work can be completed by either Blue Hill or by customer staff, depending on who is responsible for systems programming under the hosting agreement.

2 Blue Hill Plaza Pearl River, NY 10965

www.bluehilldata.com 845-620-0400

Mainframe Outsourcing Primer

Services Blue Hill typically breaks down the services (staffed services) related to mainframe hosting as follows:

Operations – mount tapes, respond to console messages, watch system for problems

Scheduler o Run the scheduler during production and respond to exceptions o Make changes to the schedule based on input from Production Control

Production Control – responsible for the logic behind the schedule

Systems Programming – responsible for software updates, performance, etc

Security Administration – Reset passwords, add new users.

Although many times Blue Hill performs all of the functions listed above as part of an agreement, the customer decides which functions, if any, they wish to keep in house. By allowing Blue Hill to provide most of the above services, Blue Hill gains the greatest leverage and can provide the best price points for the customer. The most common function for the customer to retain is production control because of the knowledge you have of your own applications. Each customer views security administration a little differently. Blue Hill works with you upfront during the discovery phase to determine the best allocation of functional roles.

Network Blue Hill designs each customer network to meet your specific needs. Most of our mainframe customers utilize Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), however dedicated circuits are available and Blue Hill can also become a segment of your MPLS network. Whatever the ultimate solution, the goal is to create a secure connection between the mainframe and your internal network. The customer or Blue Hill can manage the network, whichever is preferred.

Disaster Recovery As an option, you can purchase Disaster Recovery (DR) from Blue Hill. We maintain our own DR center in Branchburg, NJ. By subscribing to DR, you are given dedicated mainframe resources at our recovery site. If Blue Hill is performing systems programming as part of your hosting agreement, the recovery itself becomes our responsibility. In addition to traditional tape backup and restore, we also provide replication options for DR. Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) are agreed upon as part of the contracting process.

Service Levels Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are put in place for each customer to ensure the service levels required and agreed to are measured, monitored and delivered at an acceptable level. Typical mainframe service levels include:

System availability

CICS and TSO response times

Batch window completions

Some customers have service levels that are important to them based on their business. Blue Hill works with you to define and implement a customized set of service levels. We utilize automated tools to help identify and monitor critical processes occurring in your environment. This automated monitoring allows us to detect early-on if there are any issues with your processing and allows for automated responses and notifications.

Class ‘A’ – Fault Tolerant

State-of-the-Art Infrastructure

Highly Secure

SAS 70 Type II, PCI-DSS,

EU Safe Harbor Data Security Compliance

2 Blue Hill Plaza Pearl River, NY 10965

www.bluehilldata.com 845-620-0400

Mainframe Outsourcing Primer

Migration Blue Hill maintains a project plan consisting of over 200 steps, which are documented utilizing a projects management tool to plan, track, and update the entire transition process as stages are completed. The project plan details the roles and responsibilities of Blue Hill and the customer through each phase of the transition.

A typical migration approach is to do full volume tape backup and restores. The customer tapes are sent to Blue Hill’s data center, loaded into your LPAR and brought up for your use. This method is just like executing a disaster recovery plan. Prior to the migration cutover (which typically occurs over a weekend), Blue Hill restores your system several times and you fully test the system until you are satisfied with the results. Typical down-time for a turnover is 24-hours, although alternate strategies can be utilized if the available migration window is smaller.

There are additional migration methods that can be utilized which Blue Hill can explore with you, however we have found that the backup and restore method is the smoothest and provides the least risk.

A typical transition can be completed within 60 days from the kick-off. It is possible to transition within a shorter timeframe, however those scenarios are reviewed on a case-by-case basis.

Overall Timeframe Once Blue Hill receives your information, we can typically provide a budgetary proposal within one week. Most engagements, from initial contact, up to and including contract negotiations and signatures, are completed in four to five months with migration immediately following.

Putting Data Together for a Proposal Blue Hill provides a comprehensive requirements document that the customer can populate with your data profile. The basic information needed for Blue Hill to generate a budgetary price includes:

Current processor model

# of MIPS and # of LPARs required

DASD required (GB or TB)

Tape cartridges used (3490, 3590 etc.)

# of tape drives needed

The functions to be retained by the customer and the functions you would like Blue Hill to take over (see previous services section)

IBM software stack

ISV (third party) software stack

Contact Information For further questions or to explore how Blue Hill Data Services can help you, please contact us at 845.620.0400, info@bluehilldata.com.