A renowned, research-led hospital invested in a multi-year migration of its applications to a hybrid cloud environment. However, the rise of COVID-19 increased demands for data collection and processing. The hospital’s team decided to repurpose its on-premises, non-production IBM Z mainframe as a dynamic data collection system that enabled efficient and cost-effective management, storage, analysis and archiving. 

Addressing healthcare data collection and capacity challenges

Due to increasing demand for data processing, the institution required additional capacity, leading to an estimated upgrade cost of over $1 million. While exploring options, the team discovered that IBM had ceased offering upgrades for its legacy Z systems. The team began to discuss alternative solutions to source hardware and support legacy mainframe systems. 

The hospital discovered Service Express when searching for a single vendor to assist with hardware and support. Relying on guidance from the Service Express team, the institution embraced an alternative hardware upgrade strategy that leveraged a pre-owned mainframe rather than purchasing new hardware or undergoing a total refresh. 

Partnership yields an integrated and cost-effective solution

Through this new partnership, the hospital integrated migration, transition and onsite installation services for the upgrade. In addition, Service Express provided IBM mainframe maintenance and Virtual Tape Library (VTL) support for its production and backup environments. 

By utilising previous-generation hardware, the hospital doubled its capacity and reduced CapEx by over $980,000 in three years. In addition, the organisation saved an additional $300,000 in OpEx by leveraging third-party maintenance (TPM) for its legacy IBM system. 

Insurance companies are rapidly embracing insurtech solutions to attract new customers, improve efficiency and enhance customer experience. However, like many organisations undergoing digital transformation, they often face the challenge of funding new initiatives without redirecting resources from other business areas. Implementing new technology solutions while facing pressure to reduce policyholders’ costs is an ongoing challenge for all insurance providers. 

Maintaining performance amid rising operational costs

A national insurance company was tasked with finding ways to reduce operational costs without affecting its workforce and performance. Upon further discovery, the company’s IT and procurement teams reviewed OEM maintenance contracts to better understand increased costs for post-warranty hardware. 

OEM maintenance costs associated with the company’s IBM mainframe and Dell EMC storage systems were clear targets for cost reduction. The insurance company had relied on OEM support for decades. To control costs, the IT team determined it was time to gain buy-in to explore third-party maintenance (TPM) as an alternative. 

Strategic solutions enable fund reallocation and OpEx savings

After conducting thorough technical evaluations of leading global maintenance providers, Service Express ranked number one. The combination of in-house engineering expertise, multivendor capabilities and a long-standing track record of IBM mainframe support delivered the confidence needed for the insurer to transition support to Service Express. 

The company transitioned from OEM post-warranty maintenance to TPM, successfully achieving its primary objective of reducing costs. In addition, the insurance provider utilised Service Express’ ExpressConnect^® Monitoring platform, which streamlined maintenance, automated support and increased productivity. 

The partnership with Service Express helped the insurer reallocate $250,000 in OpEx to other insurtech initiatives. The business achieved 75% savings on its contracted services by utilising a TPM provider instead of OEM support without compromising performance. 

The global manufacturing industry faces numerous challenges, including significant disruptions due to supply chain interruptions, assembly plant closures and a limited workforce. Even the most resilient organisations struggle to adapt in uncertain times. 

Economic uncertainty brings unforeseen IT challenges 

A global manufacturer identified an urgent need to increase its mainframe computing power to deliver sustainable performance amid unplanned production requirements and improve its business continuity capacity. However, economic uncertainty caused budget constraints and created a barrier, along with the impending expense of new IBM hardware. 

Confronted with OEM production backorders and extended lead times, the company’s procurement team sought a solution to meet their needs while minimising IT spending. They identified Service Express as a potential partner because of its inventory of IBM mainframe hardware, technical expertise and third-party maintenance (TPM) services. 

Cost-effective hardware solution addresses capacity demands 

After understanding the company’s hardware goals, Service Express identified, configured, delivered and installed an IBM Z system that provided an additional 10,000 MIPs capacity. Rather than undergoing a costly hardware refresh, the company opted for the previous generation of equipment, resulting in over $1 million in CapEx savings. Additionally, leveraging TPM support saved the company over $300,000 in OpEx annually. 

Service Express helped sustain performance during a period of disruption, uncertainty and pressure to cut costs. Now, the manufacturer can seamlessly scale its computing power to address unexpected fluctuations in production cycles with trusted infrastructure and reliable support from Service Express. 

For decades, a mass media company has remained at the forefront of world events, finance, entertainment and more, with millions of digital and magazine subscribers accessing its content. The organisation continuously creates and publishes content highlighting real-time events. To ensure it maintains operations, the company enforces a zero-tolerance policy for service delays and downtime for its partners. 

Maintenance provider skill gap extends outage and recovery timelines 

Before partnering with Service Express, the media company relied on another maintenance provider for a small portion of its infrastructure. Only one critical incident underscored the risks associated with providers lacking experienced engineers and systems that automatically identify hardware failures. 

The gap in technical capabilities resulted in extended production and recovery downtime. This experience demonstrated that not all maintenance providers are well-equipped for mission-critical support. 

Solving downtime concerns with proactive and reliable support 

As a result, the company decided to find a new maintenance provider with technical proficiency and automated support. The company needed a provider capable of supporting its diverse Dell EMC, HPE, Oracle/Sun and Hitachi infrastructure. 

The global media company decided to partner with Service Express for third-party maintenance (TPM). Service Express provides access to L1, L2 and L3 engineers with multiplatform knowledge and responsive service callbacks within 30 minutes. Along with multivendor expertise, Service Express offers 24/7 hardware support monitoring that automatically opens a service ticket using real-time alerts. The IT team has peace of mind that ExpressConnect^® Monitoring will immediately place a ticket when a hardware failure occurs to reduce downtime. 

The company also consolidated its maintenance service agreements, simplifying and streamlining contract management through coterminous agreements. 

Switching to Service Express saved time by proactively identifying hardware failures, placing service tickets and simplifying maintenance agreements. Leveraging TPM support helped the company save over $750,000 in maintenance costs within three years. 

Faced with rising costs, one of America’s largest energy providers committed to delivering reliable electricity solutions identified an opportunity to optimise its increasing IT spending. Maintaining hundreds of specialised servers had become increasingly expensive, prompting the company to reassess its support strategy. The energy provider partnered with Service Express to control costs and identify new opportunities for efficiency. 

Challenges in maintaining in-house systems

The company’s specialised infrastructure is vital for ensuring local communities and businesses have electricity, but servicing the equipment became expensive and complex for several reasons: 

• Maintaining systems was challenging due to their remote locations and lack of in-house support staff. 
• The company was having trouble finding parts for the customized systems. 
• Extended lead times on parts led to longer disruptive outages. 
• Refreshing systems was no longer an option due to a limited IT budget. 

Implementing change required a shift in its current maintenance and hardware strategy. Previously, the company relied on the OEM for equipment support and hardware. In addition to leveraging OEM maintenance, systems were refreshed every three years regardless of current performance or needs. These practices placed a strain on the company’s IT budget. 

Navigating new maintenance strategies

The energy provider had never worked with a company like Service Express. The company’s leadership team was cautious initially since the systems are vital to its operations. Service Express alleviated concerns by providing detailed equipment analysis using Maintenance Navigator, identifying opportunities to leverage third-party maintenance (TPM). In addition, Service Express’ access to previous-generation parts required for the company’s customised systems granted its teams peace of mind. 

Experienced service team members were available to support the company’s most remote locations, reducing service times. 

The energy provider’s transition to TPM and refined hardware strategy reduced support costs by 20%, saving several million dollars without compromising uptime or performance. 

Alfa has delivered its industry-leading platform, Alfa Systems to the global asset and automotive finance industry since 1990. The world’s largest automotive and equipment finance companies rely on the Alfa Systems platform to create an end-to-end solution with workflow automation, multicountry functionality and more. 

Evaluating alternatives to support and modernise IBM infrastructure

Due to earlier versions of Alfa Systems being built on IBM infrastructure, the company utilised OEM software support and Service Express for Data Centre Maintenance to ensure the hardware remained up and running. To eliminate complexities and streamline support, Alfa consolidated its IBM i and other hardware maintenance to Service Express.

As the Alfa Systems platform evolved and customers migrated to newer versions developed on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company began to evaluate what was next for its legacy hardware. While IBM equipment is known for its longevity and reliability, the team was interested in exploring other long-term solutions outside of on-premises. In addition, the Alfa team faced roadblocks finding IT talent with unique IBM i skill sets. The time spent supporting the equipment internally also contributed to the decision to explore alternatives. 

Leveraging a fully managed solution to redirect time and resources

The Alfa and Service Express teams worked together to outline a plan to consolidate the company’s IBM workloads to Service Express’ Specialty Cloud for IBM Power solution. Moving to Specialty Cloud meant Alfa would migrate its on-prem hardware to Service Express’ private single-point cloud solution. In turn, reducing the time, resources and IBM i talent needed to support the infrastructure in-house. 

Throughout the project, Alfa had direct access to Service Express’ Technical Team to address any updates or changes. Service Express continues to operate as an extension of Alfa’s team by providing hands-on support for the company’s fully managed cloud solution. 

For over 25 years, Pall-Ex Group has provided thousands of businesses safe and reliable palletised freight distribution services around the UK and Europe. Pall-Ex Group serves customers of all sizes and industries, including manufacturing, agriculture, construction and others. 

With more than 40,000 pallets entering Pall-Ex Group’s hubs daily, the company must have the latest technology to ensure customers know when to expect their next delivery. The company maintains six physical locations to support its robust network in the UK and 5,000 users across Europe. 

Over time, balancing priorities and meeting business demands became a challenge for Pall-Ex’s IT team. To advance its growth initiatives, the company partnered with several maintenance and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers. However, Pall-Ex began to experience poor service quality and instabilities that impacted its customer base and overall business. Consequently, the company started its search for a new partner who could provide the services and support required to maintain the business. 

Collaborative approach to inform decision-making

Pall-Ex partnered with Service Express in 2018 based on a recommendation to the business, the company’s comprehensive service offerings and experienced people who invest in their team’s success. 

The Pall-Ex team was confident in Service Express’ ability to foster business growth and quickly meet business demands. Service Express provides IaaS for the company’s x86 workloads to support its Nexus Core Operational System and MyNexus pallet tracking software. 

Dave shares the tangible results of working with Service Express, highlighting the benefits of migrating to a secure, agile and reliable IaaS solution. “The stability and security of the Nexus and MyNexus platform have allowed us to focus on key business tasks that move it forward. This enables us to deliver strategic projects with advantages over and above our competitors.” 

Ongoing partnership built on quality service and reliability

When reflecting on the several-year partnership with Service Express, Dave emphasises, “The service quality is the main differentiator. I’ve been working with Service Express for more than fifteen years. In that time, we’ve established key relationships. I can count on one hand the number of issues I’ve dealt with over the years. However, when there is an issue, the people within the business take ownership and resolve the problem. Businesses make mistakes, but Service Express seldom makes the same mistake twice.” 

Pall-Ex’s confidence in the Service Express team and service delivery is further proof of the valued partnership. Working with Service Express as an extension of the Pall-Ex team for current and future projects has redirected time, budget and resources to other business priorities.  

Glen Dimplex offers innovative solutions ranging from consumer appliances to industrial heating, ventilation and cooling units. Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, the company operates in nearly 20 countries across Europe, North America, Australia and Asia. 

After hosting and supporting systems in-house for over 25 years, the company determined it was time to evaluate its IT strategy and approach. Glen Dimplex initially partnered with Service Express for third-party Data Centre Maintenance. Service Express’ knowledge and experience with mission-critical IBM systems influenced the company’s decision. 

Taking the next step toward innovation

After experiencing Service Express’ flexibility and service quality, Glen Dimplex began to evaluate the next steps toward modernising its critical ERP and legacy IBM systems. Service Express and Glen Dimplex worked together to identify a plan to improve resiliency and meet the company’s commercial and operational requirements. 

The next step included migrating Glen Dimplex’s high availability (HA) pairs for several business units into Service Express’ UK-based Tier III and IV by design data centre and colocation facilities. Glen Dimplex received technical support at every step of the migration into Service Express’ availability zones. The shift to Managed Colocation laid the foundation for the journey to Service Express’ fully managed Specialty Cloud for IBM Power solution. 

“The hosting approach meant we avoided €450k of capital expenditure required to replace ageing on-premises hardware. Operating costs also decreased due to a reduction in local IT overheads plus the economies of scale you expect with cloud.” 

– Jonathan Webb, IT Director, Glen Dimplex 

Investing in transformation

Service Express staff and engineers carefully planned and executed the cloud migration from start to finish to mitigate risk and ensure business continuity. Glen Dimplex’s IT staff has redirected time and resources spent updating and managing systems to other business priorities without sacrificing peace of mind. Service Express engineers managed the infrastructure around the clock to maintain resiliency and optimum performance. 

“With the ever-changing cultural landscape and our commitment to sustainability, Service Express has the solutions and team to help us achieve our goals. The support has been first class pre- and post-implementation.” 

– Phil Grundy, Head of Business Systems, Glen Dimplex 

The company looks forward to modernising its IT estate and experiencing the benefits of Service Express’ fully managed and secure solution. This will allow its teams to focus on serving customers and growth opportunities. 

Improved uptime and productivity

By migrating systems to Service Express, Forterra has observed several improvements.

• Increase in availability and system performance speeds
• Simplified system administration
• Strengthened productivity with new MPLS network connection

Looking ahead to the future

Service Express currently monitors and maintains Forterra’s suite of data centre and MPLS services and over 125 of the company’s VMs. Forterra’s team is pleased with the process from start to finish, and they look forward to additional projects in the future.

An award-winning seamless migration

The migration of the customer business units took place over the course of around ten weekends, with global visibility for the client at the highest levels. There were no functional changes to how the Movex environment operated, with integrations such as CUMPAS, EDI and 3PL performing as usual.

Service Express met with the staff to take a deep dive assessment to fully understand their system requirements including applications, integrations, current performance and future growth. Using a backup from each LPAR, the workloads we restored into the Service Express Specialty Cloud, connectivity, application and performance benchmark testing were performed and approved prior to each LPAR going live in the cloud. A final refresh of data was performed to ensure there was minimal disruption to the online availability of the customer’s systems.

The employees were certainly impressed that the move was implemented without a hitch.

In recognition of this trouble-free transition, Service Express was awarded ‘Best Supplier Innovations Indirect Sourcing,’ which they were very proud to receive. An outcome that they certainly hadn’t expected, they were just so pleased that the solution and migration exceeded customer expectations.

Result Highlights:

• Entire customer estate migrated into the cloud on time, as agreed
• 24/7×365 service desk – essential to meet operations spanning many time zones around the globe
• Proof of concept available to test all aspects of the non-production LPARs prior to migrating the production LPARs into the cloud as signoff
• Fully hosted managed service performed daily
• Award-winning seamless migration
• Substantial saving of $2.4 million in operational costs

A move made with the confidence of capabilities

Through the extensive hosting capabilities of Service Express, there are 16 partitions now in the cloud, each dedicated to operations in territories like Australia, Europe, China and Singapore. Another two environments are scheduled to be set up to expand the cloud-based footprint and to establish more cost savings through the reduction of on-premise hardware.

Also under consideration for the future is a project to migrate mainframe hardware into the cloud. Service Express already has a strong reputation on maintenance for this type of server and has placed many mainframes into the cloud with the same ease and support applied to mid-range transitions.

Thanks to the expertise of Service Express, $2.4 million in operational savings has been achieved through establishing cloud-based hosting for the engine developer’s AS/400 Movex environment.

In recognition of this outstanding work, Service Express were honoured to receive the ‘Best Supplier Innovations Indirect Sourcing Award’ from the customer.

A fintech company needs a specialty cloud solution that is secure, allowing for data protection and application availability 

In the marketplace, there are limited options to take IT infrastructure into the cloud if you deal with banking and wealth management transactions. 

In the UK, many data centres are classified as Tier 2 and 3, but these are inadequate for financial requirements. Service Express offers a Specialty Cloud for IBM Power solution hosted in our Tier IV Design data centre to fulfil vital requirements for data protection and application availability. 

Service Express’ Specialty Cloud allowed Fintech customer to expand financial and payment solutions to their end users  

Several key differentials provided Service Express with advantages that attracted the customer: 

• Backing from regulatory bodies – the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and European Banking Authority (EBA) 
• A strong skill set in IBM i specialisation 
• Reduced supply chain risk as we fully own our data centre 
• Approval from the company’s Risk and Compliance team  
• PCI-DSS Level 1 certification, the highest level of security for businesses that store, transmit, or process credit card data 
• All data centre staff are employed by Service Express 

We have been highly acclaimed by this client for our quick responses and strong levels of support, which remained high even during the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to our collaborative approaches. 

It is clear Specialty Cloud for IBM Power delivers many advantages for those in the finance industry, including the Fintech specialist customer, who will be utilising Service Express’s IBM i and domain expertise to expand service offerings to their end users.