One of the world’s largest systems integrators, despite its vast IT capabilities and resources, found it beneficial at times to engage smaller, more agile, and cost-effective service providers to meet specific needs. These areas included data center management, end-user support, and mainframe talent development.

Challenges

The integrator, with a workforce of over 100,000 employees, had been relying on an external service provider to manage eight of its U.S. data centers. However, due to ongoing concerns with contract performance, the integrator decided to put the data center management contract out for RFP at the conclusion of the existing three-year agreement.

Separately, the client sought to better control costs associated with a large, centrally managed service desk and its related field support operations. Additionally, they faced growing challenges in maintaining their mainframe environments.

A retiring mainframe workforce, coupled with a scarcity of new mainframe talent, made it increasingly difficult to support and enhance the mission-critical applications running on these systems. Addressing this issue was particularly important, as they viewed mainframe as a major growth opportunity that strategically complemented their cloud services within the systems integration business.

Our solution

The client had a strong track record of success working with our talent division for IT staff augmentation but had not engaged us for IT technology solutions. We took the time to understand their business needs and discussed what was important to them and their customers. We were chosen for our responsiveness— as demonstrated during our previous staff augmentation work, where we quickly addressed their needs. Our ability to scale rapidly and offer competitive pricing also made us an attractive partner.

We transitioned the full data center management encompassing:

• 24/7 management of eight data centers across the United States
• Cabling and break / fix / IMACD site support
• Media and inventory management
• Capacity planning
• Supplier oversight
• Audit and documentation
• Mainframe (Z12/13) and AS/400 midrange support
• Physical and network security risk assessments

The contract was written as a multi-year SLA with progressive service levels to drive continuous improvement.  A convenient contractual mechanism enabled “above base” projects and one-time incremental support as needed.

Within a month and a half, we transitioned 100 personnel to take over the data center management.  We maintained green metrics across the SLAs month after month — no metrics were red or even yellow.  Based on our strong, quality delivery, additional U.S. and Canadian data centers were added to the contract, eventually resulting in 17 total data centers with 140 personnel under our management.

From an end user services standpoint, we were awarded an additional contract to manage a 266-member, centralized service desk and an 80-member field support team with depot / dispatch models.  This large service desk supported system integrator contracts in industries including healthcare, government, manufacturing, and education. The contract for SLA-based end user services ensured year-over-year, productivity-led cost reductions.

To better deal with the need for mainframe operations and maintenance, we leveraged our training business unit, GenSpark, and trained young, skilled talent with a customized curriculum (designed collectively by the client and GenSpark).  This ensured that the skills taught were perfectly aligned with the client’s immediate and future needs.

The intense eight-week training covered technical skills such as COBOL, CICS, VSAM, and DB2 along with soft skills. Initially, 20 candidates were trained, followed by an additional cohort of 10 candidates.  The program was so successful that the client requested four additional cohorts of trainees.  These personnel were subsequently converted into permanent employees after 12 to 14 months.

As more senior mainframe operations personnel retired, the client mentored more junior L2 support personnel to take L3 mainframe support roles. They also used the newly trained young talent from GenSpark to backfill the L2 roles. Over time, the new L2 personnel have gained experience, with some of them transitioning into team leader roles.

Business outcomes

Our solution has provided many benefits, including:
Data center management

• Reduced multi-year TCO by 25%
• Planned and executed data center move / consolidations with zero outages
• Met or exceeded SLA compliance 24 x 7 x 365
• Refreshed complete security posture across physical and network security led by penetration testing

End user services

• Improved SLA adherence across service desk by 25%
• Reduced depot MTTR from 7 days to 4 business days (40% reduction)
• Reduced dispatch MTTR from 5 to 2 business days (60% reduction)

Mainframe operations personnel: Hire-Train-Deploy

• Ongoing mainframe support through the ability to fill in for difficult-to-replace, retiring mainframe personnel
• 98% retention of trained personnel based on careful selection, testing, and joint coaching / mentorship program
• Resources in place for the systems integrator to support high mainframe growth in their customer base