MidAtlantic City Government Expands Blue Hill’s Services with Mainframe Applications Support

This City government is the largest independent city and one of the most populous cities in the United States selected Blue Hill to support their legacy mainframe infrastructure requirements; to support their day-to-day operations on a consistent basis, while lowering operating costs and reducing risks associated with their current hardware and a retiring workforce. They wanted a Service Provider who would act as their partner, in adhering to industry best practices in delivering better than expected services, and access to newer capabilities.

This strategic decision included the need to have the Service Provider support an IBM Mainframe VM/VSE platform. Also, because this is a city government handling extremely sensitive information, secure communications were a necessity in running and maintaining this City’s critical applications running on older IBM Mainframe hardware.

Departments requiring support within the City include the Fire Department, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Housing, and the Department of Community Services, the Department of Public Works, including Parking and Towing, the Sheriff’s Department, including Warrants and Civil Citations, and the Finance Department, including Real Property Tax and Billing.

Support was needed in a flexible manner; as staff members within a particular group retired, Blue Hill staff stepped in to complete Knowledge Transfer and began supporting these requirements.

Challenge(s)

• Risk of key mainframe technical support personnel retirements
• The soon-to-be-retiring team who maintained these applications had the tribal knowledge, who never had the time or inclination to transcribe this knowledge into documentation, or to update the older documentation they had inherited.
• Need of a deeper level of Mainframe expertise to support their VSE environment
• Decision to upgrade to newer hardware.
• Provide the required redundancy to prevent long-term outages.
• Stabilize and modernize their legacy mainframe platform and operating systems.
• As is often the case with critical applications specific to this city government, running on an IBM Mainframe, there was no one software package running on x86 architecture that could provide all the necessary requirements

Solution

• Blue Hill’s VSE Mainframe Hosting services
• Dedicated Disaster Recovery (DR) Services
• Fully managed, 24/365 service delivery, Mainframe VSE technical services and systems programming, operations, Help Desk, dedicated Account Management, and remote print RSA solution.
• Newer technology improved performance and reduced response time
• Turnaround was quicker, jobs were completed faster, requests were responded to in the timeframes required, problems were reduced, and there was an overall improvement in reporting.
• This solution provided better services in maintaining a supportive infrastructure, at a reduced cost.

Continuing the Relationship

A few years later Blue Hill was asked to assess their current environment related to the COBOL applications.

• Blue Hill provided an IT Operational Assessment of the operational processes and departmental functions related to the designated applications.
• Assessment of all applications was completed, involving a rigorous effort, and concluded with a Knowledge Base and documentation listing all jobs, within all applications, with a distinct listing of all variables.
• Departments were targeted and workflow processes assessed including the following functional aspects: Workflow (origination through completion), Project management, Change Management, Production Control, Job Scheduling and Tracking, Development and Maintenance Processes and Standards, and Systems Integration and Implementations.
• The analysis was completed, documentation was now available, and recommendations were made to strengthen performance.

The City expanded the scope of services with Blue Hill, beginning January 1, 2018, this City Government selected Blue Hill to continue to provide infrastructure managed services, along with the complete Applications support in replacing their retiring workforce and to help the City reduce costs.

• The City once again selected Blue Hill to provide Applications support, to improve performance and help the City reduce costs associated with providing this support.

Almost 7 years after the relationship began, and more than 1 year since Applications support was added, the City is extremely pleased that their relationship with Blue Hill has expanded and continues to reap benefits as a trusted partner in delivering these mission critical services.

We feel like the Blue Hill staff is really our staff, who are extremely proactive and sensitive to satisfying the needs of our end user community. We knew that extending our relationship with Blue Hill would provide us with what we were looking for: a cost efficient, and very effective support team who prides themselves on maintaining a healthy and supportive relationship with the City.