Major Metropolitan City Government Selects Blue Hill for Remote MF Services

As one of the largest municipal public employee retirement systems in the United States, this major metropolitan city government agency administers the statutory pension benefits of its members, retirees and beneficiaries.

This government agency is a cost-sharing, multiple employer, public employee retirement system, and its objective is to run as efficiently as possible. Part of its commitment is to leverage modern technology to set new standards of excellence in the services being provided, and to do this as cost efficiently as possible.

Blue Hill was selected to provide remote operations and remote technical support for their IBM Mainframe z/VM and z/VSE operating systems. The Agency’s decision makers were extremely satisfied that Blue Hill had the technical skills and long-standing experience in providing z/VM and z/VSE support, and they were especially pleased with the culture and teamwork of the Blue Hill Delivery Services Team. This provided the essential level of comfort and trust to ensure a strong partnership in delivering these critical services.

The engagement will last a minimum of three years, while this Agency is in the midst of replacing their mainframe system with a newer system based on a distributed system architecture. Outsourcing these functional areas to Blue Hill will allow their IT staff to transition from their current mainframe legacy support roles, to learn and help build the new system. Although lowering operating costs was of prime consideration, running the day-to-day workloads effectively in the current mainframe environment was critical.

Specific 24/365 support services include:

• Maintaining the software lifecycle for the z/VM and z/VSE operating systems and installed Third Party/ISV software, including upgrades, installation of patches and hot fixes, and major software updates;
• Day-to-day system administration;
• Supporting the CICS software environment;
• Supporting the DB2 zLinux environment;
• Batch scheduling and remediation;
• Performance management;
• Operations and Monitoring services;
• Software Preventative Maintenance;
• Disaster Recovery services and associated testing;
• Storage and backup services;
• Monthly status report for all services being delivered;
• Meeting or exceeding all service levels.

“This government agency is running critical workloads that benefit over 300,000 of this city’s employees and retirees, along with health care workers and transit employees. We are pleased they have put their trust in our capabilities and look forward to a long standing and beneficial relationship.” John M. Lalli, Chief Operating Officer, Blue Hill Data Services

About Blue Hill Data Services

Blue Hill Data Services consistently achieves 100% client satisfaction by providing Private Cloud and fully managed 24/7 data center hosting solutions, and a full array of complementary IT support services.

We deliver all services from On-Shore, USA, and since 1994 we have supported government and commercial clients; helping them reduce their operating expense, eliminate capital expense, mitigate the risk of a retiring workforce, meet all regulatory compliance and audit requirements, and achieve 100% client success.

Blue Hill specializes in mainframe, and also provides multi-platform services and infrastructure solutions. We have successfully carved out a niche in supporting Mainframe mission-critical applications. Acting as our Clients’ partner, we can support their environments either indefinitely or until they choose to get off the Mainframe, providing flexibility in reducing costs as utilization decreases.

Our differentiation is providing customized solutions, flexibility both in contract and solutions, cost effectiveness, and personalized attention. Our client’s data center environment can be hosted within Blue Hills’ private cloud facilities, or Blue Hill support services can be provided remotely to the Client’s site.

IT Managed Delivery Services and Solutions:

• Mainframe-as-a-Service (MFaaS)
• AS/400 – iSeries-as-a-Service
• Client-Server Systems Support
• Applications Development and Maintenance Support Services
• Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
• Colocation Services
• Remote Support
• Consulting Assistance

Our deep technical skills and longstanding experience enable us to support our clients’ legacy environments as well as implement new technology solutions.

We do not force clients to upgrade or change the way they are used to doing business. This enables seamless transitions, minimizes risk, and completes migrations in shorter timeframes.

We are proud of our 100% client satisfaction.