Mainframe Managed Services
Key building blocks of mainframe managed services.
Partnering for Mainframe Excellence
Empowering Your Mainframe Team
In the Mainframe Managed Services model, CROZ experts usually take responsibility for certain parts or the whole mainframe infrastructure.
Most often, the customer team remains in place, while CROZ specialists handle part of the activities, acting as a part of the customer team. The managed services model generally fills the skill gaps, reduces costs, improves service quality, and frees internal teams to shift their focus from daily operations to more strategic goals.
In this model, the user typically retains ownership and management of the mainframe infrastructure, meaning the user remains the owner of the hardware and the equipment remains in the user’s system room. Similarly, the user continues to be the contract holder for the use of software licenses, maintaining a direct relationship with the vendor from whom the software was acquired.
Employing a “CROZ Mainframe Managed Services” provides a true partnership, rather than mere outsourcing of certain activities.
Operations support is a cornerstone of mainframe managed services
Mainframe Operations Center
Operations support isn’t just about the nitty-gritty of day-to-day operations. It includes, but goes beyond, mainframe operator team and incident management. It’s a comprehensive offering tailored to bridge skills gaps or availability challenges an in-house team might face, ensuring robust support for the entire production environment, and even extending to development and testing environments. At its heart is the concept of “Run the Bank” daily operations, which encompasses a gamut of activities and 24/7 support if needed.
From Operators
The Mainframe Operators Center (MOC) ensures smooth and efficient operations, helping you maximize uptime, streamline performance, and optimize your mainframe operations. Our team of trained professional operators monitors your system’s health, keeping an eye on the System Console around the clock. They quickly identify issues, track ongoing tasks to ensure they execute as expected, troubleshoot any problems that arise, and analyse resource utilization (CPU, storage, network) to optimize performance and detect anomalies.
MOC operators will ensure that your job scheduling and execution are on point. This includes monitoring, cancelling, and resubmitting all your 24/7 jobs and administering job schedulers like IBM Workload Automation or BMC Control-M. Additionally, they will track and manage backup and restore jobs and handle disaster recovery tasks to protect your data and ensure business continuity.
… to Operations
Our process starts with a standard review of logs, and then delves deeper into monitoring the system’s current state. Tools like the RMF subsystem and OMEGAMON are invaluable here. Regular system upgrades with PTFs ensure that everything remains up-to-date, minimizing operational hitches.
When it comes to data management, activities range from creating backup copies with tools like HSM, RMM, and OAM, to regular database upkeep with IBM DB2 and IMS DB.
Ensuring the safety and security of mainframe operations is pivotal. This is achieved by working with security subsystems like IBM RACF and CA Top Secret.
crucial process for any organization
Incident support
Incident Management aims to minimize disruption to the business by restoring service operations to agreed levels as quickly as possible.
The focus of Incident Support is to provide triage of all reported incidents and apply the necessary remedies. The CROZ experts collaborate closely with the client’s team and any 3rd party which may be involved (for example, networking, security, vendors…).
A 24×7 helpdesk, which may include Operators Center, along with the necessary Support Request Management and ticketing processes are made available, and this includes the CROZ Case Management System and incident support team.
During the onboarding phase, we will also define requirements for a Service Level Agreement (SLA). While operations support is typically provided during a client’s core business hours, SLAs can be tailored based on individual business requirements, ensuring every client gets precisely what they need. Additionally, we define items such as Target Time to Action, Target Resolution time, Incident Severity Levels, etc.
Operations support encompasses a broad range of technical activities
Expert System Administration and Support
Operations support encompasses a broad range of technical activities
Our operations support team is responsible for a wide array of technical tasks, including infrastructure monitoring, task management, system administration, and client communication. Through proactive monitoring of CPU, memory, and disk usage, we can identify and address potential issues before they impact system performance. Additionally, our team is responsible for planning and executing system upgrades and patching, as well as maintaining comprehensive documentation.
Make a full use of managed services
Consulting & Enhancement
The mainframe world is not static. We always allocate part of the contractual budget for additional services that go beyond operations/incident support. These services may include consulting, modernization, implementation services or security enhancements.
- Modernization involves updating and enhancing your mainframe environment to leverage the latest technologies and practices. This can involve adopting hybrid-cloud solutions, implementing DevOps tools and practices, utilizing automation tools, and improving security measures. Our goal is to ensure your mainframe infrastructure remains robust, scalable, and capable of meeting evolving business needs.
- Consultancy services typically consist of architecture review, advising on best practices, helping in new system design, or integration with existing systems.
- Implementation may include the installation of new system components, upgrading or migrating existing components, customizing specific infrastructure components, optimizing cost and performance, and integrating with other parts of the information system.
- Security services focus on safeguarding your mainframe environment. This includes implementing robust security measures, conducting regular security audits, managing access controls, monitoring for vulnerabilities, and ensuring compliance with industry standards and regulations.
How it goes?
Onboarding process
Onboarding services essentially include an analysis of the current state of z/OS, z/VSE, z/VM, Linux on IBM Z systems and associated subsystems or software products such as DB2 for z/OS, CICS, MQ for z/OS, IMS products and their high-availability functionalities e.g. Parallel Sysplex, DB2 Data Sharing, CICSPlex, MQ Queue Sharing, GDPS for which managed service services are desired.
This is done to view settings, management processes, utilization, used functionality, and to get acquainted with user teams in any way connected to the subject infrastructure. The result of the onboarding service is well documented analysis results, which are a good starting point for further work with the system, whether it’s classic incident or operations support or any other activities that would be covered by additional service requests. Similarly, along with the analysis results, the user is presented with suggestions for improving system management and operation.
Why choose CROZ Mainframe Managed Services?
- Empowering Mainframe Team: Our collaborative approach ensures your organization maintains control over its mainframe environment while leveraging our expertise for enhanced efficiency and a competitive edge.
- Expertise & Reliability in every aspect of our Mainframe operation: Our entire mainframe team are skilled professionals with in-depth knowledge of the mainframe environment. They are committed to providing high availability and minimal disruptions to your system.
- Tailored, Cost Efficient & Scalable offering: We will design and tailor our support team and service to reduce operational costs and optimize resource management. We will also support the growth of your enterprise, offering flexible solutions that adapt to your changing needs.
- Transparency in Contracting: Our transparent contracts outline all terms explicitly, ensuring predictable budgeting and streamlined additional requests.
- Sustainable in every aspect: We implement practices that reduce environmental impact while maintaining operational efficiency, including optimizing software applications and workloads, using sustainable employment and procurement practices, monitoring and reporting about energy consumption, carbon emissions, and resource utilization.