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FAQs - Midrange AS/400 and iSeries Outsourcing
- How much should I expect to reduce my Midrange operating budget?
Blue Hill typically saves customers more than 20%, and many have achieved as much as 40% savings. The major factors that influence the amount of savings include the types of IBM products you use, staffing, third party software products, and real estate and energy costs.
- Will I run on a dedicated iSeries at your data center?
Some customers do decide to run on a dedicated iSeries, however, most customers will have their own dedicated LPAR (logical partition) on the iSeries and will be provided all the CPU, Memory and DASD etc. necessary to run their applications. This gives the customer the best pricing available.
- How are OS/400 software licenses handled?
Most often Blue Hill will use our IBM software licenses and enterprise agreements from other software vendors. This allows us to give our customers’ the best possible pricing. For ISV (third party) software licensing, they will remain in the customer’s name and will continue to pay the maintenance fees. This is the most economical thing to do since the customer has already paid for them. Also, at times we may have a license or a replacement product, and will offer that to our customer to create additional costs savings.
- Who handles systems programming and operations?
We work with each customer to understand how their unique environment is currently being run, what work is being accomplished, and offer the best approach for staffing. Our offering may include systems programming and operations support, and this end-to-end offering typically yields the greatest cost savings.
- Do you also offer disaster recovery?
Blue Hill offers dedicated disaster recovery services: both traditional tape backup and restore, and high availability disaster recovery. Many of our Midrange customers may already have a subscription-based disaster recovery service prior to migrating to Blue Hill; we can replace that service as part of the overall solution. We provide dedicated resources (CPU, DASD, TAPE, etc.) in our Branchburg, NJ back-up and recovery facility. Blue Hill will work with each customer to develop a customized plan that provides the RPO (Recovery Point Objective) and RTO (Recovery Time Objective) that meets the customers’ business needs. The disaster recovery plan is then tested on an annual or semi-annual basis, as the business needs dictate.
- How long will it take to migrate to your data center?
A typical Midrange migration takes 25-60 days, although we have completed migrations sooner than that when required. We recommend an average of 30-90 days utilizing our proven methodology to build and test the new environment, and conduct the necessary amounts of system and end-user testing.
- What are your contract terms?
Blue Hill offers flexible contract terms to meet the specific and individual needs of each customer. A majority of our contracts range from 3-5 years, with options to renew; shorter terms are also available.
Blue Hill Data Services: Cost-Effective, Secure, On-Shore Data Center Solutions
Blue Hill helps customers reduce their operating costs and minimize risk
by providing fully managed data center solutions. Our world-class on-shore facilities,
highly skilled and experienced staff, and reliable 24x7 services have supported clients worldwide and from all industries since 1994.
Blue Hill specializes in mainframe, open systems, and AS/400 iSeries managed hosting services
and dedicated Disaster Recovery solutions. Our differentiation is providing customized yet flexible SLAs and contracts
that enable clients to work in the manner they choose, delivering total end-to-end support
or specific functions as required. Rather than force clients to change their operating procedures to fit our standards, we offer the same services a customer is comfortable with in their current environment; recommendations for increased efficiencies are provided but not mandatory. We are proud our client retention is 100%.
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