Client Endorses Blue Hill and the Team
VP/CIO, North America Operations
Prior to joining this automotive manufacturer, this CIO had a 30+ year career with IBM, had started as a mainframe developer (PL/S and BAL in an MVS environment), with roles including Software Engineering Manager, Director of Global Sales System development, and overall IT responsibility for IBM North America. He became an executive with IBM in 1997 and joined this automotive manufacturer as its North America CIO in 2017.
Overall Endorsement:
I deal with hundreds of vendors, and Blue Hill is only one of two vendors I will provide a reference for. They have been a great partner, from initial evaluation through migration to ongoing daily support. This team has never let us down and they provide great value.
I am extremely satisfied with Blue Hill – we were able to migrate from a sub-optimal service provider to one that provides consistent and solid support, we have established a relationship with a company that goes above and beyond expectations in servicing Mazda’s best interests, and we reduced our spend.
The Migration:
When I joined Mazda, the contract with our current service provider was up for renewal, and we needed to either renew or find a new provider who ideally would give us better service, be more responsive, and help reduce our costs. Contract renewal was the perfect time to conduct a competitive bid. Blue Hill was one of several firms we explored and the one we chose after intensive study.
We selected Blue Hill based on their management experience in migration and support, customer references, impressive facilities, strong technical capabilities, excellent communication skills, and overall cost effectiveness.
The initial migration from our prior provider to Blue Hill was a major concern, because the migration to our old provider (prior to my term at Mazda) was described as extremely poor – with deadlines missed and problems that persisted for months before Mazda gained basic stability. Many of our most critical systems still run on the mainframe, so this was extremely disruptive to our business.
With Blue Hill, I experienced the smoothest transition I have seen in my career – and a large part of this came from the intensive planning conducted by Blue Hill (backed by their experience). The execution of migration was flawless, and we ran ahead of schedule. Our business team was running on our new Blue Hill environment on Monday morning – and never saw any problem or impact – we were stable from day one.
The Blue Hill Team:
We developed a seamless relationship with the Blue Hill team from the beginning – we consider it OUR team, the Mazda/Blue Hill team. Blue Hill communicates extremely well with the Mazda team, and with the other Mazda vendors, addressing any issues that are encountered within the production environment and implementing needed changes with the same thoughtful planning we saw in the initial migration.”
Disaster Recovery:
Like our initial migration and stable operations, Disaster Recovery testing is another area where Blue Hill excels. We have experienced extremely smooth DR testing – it’s easy, fast, and there haven’t been any issues.
Cost Effectiveness:
We received bids from multiple vendors, and Blue Hill was very competitive in the market. But given the ongoing excellent ser- vice we have experienced; I now realize their value is even greater than I first estimated.
