RSM Partners
Specializing in IBM’s System z Mainframe

For more than half a decade, mainframes have served as the ‘go-to’ for the finance, insurance, and the government sectors. Today transactional data lives on main-frames and through different phases of modern history, IBM has had big role in offering the mainframes for various juggernauts of the industry. However, the plethora of issues in the IBM z server/mainframe space never seems to cease for CIOs especially pertaining to the security and skills. There is scant attention being paid to the security because of the assumption that security is considered as a veritable ‘Fort Knox’. However, in reality, enterprises confront difficulties in risk mitigation, compliance, or Digital Light Processing (DLP) and face issues due to lack of skilled resources. This leaves companies searching in vain, for replacement skills, or desperately scouring the contractor market.

In such a scenario, a UK-based company, RSM Partners, which specializes in IBM’s System z platform, offers staff augmentation, project delivery, and managed service delivery at the appropriate time. As an IBM Business Partner, it currently administrates three mainframes in-house, delivering demonstration, proof of technology and education facilities that span z/OS, zVM and Linux on z.

RSM helps various clients to salvage the problems with its experience. “On the security side, RSM deals with various security considerations—risk, penetration testing, vulnerabilities, and compliance,” says Andrew Downie, Commercial Director of RSM Partners. The company’s soft-ware migrations team assists clients in replacing Independent Software Vendor (ISV) software with IBM equivalents. “Our mainframe team assists clients individually; works as a team, delivers projects, and takes on responsibility for a delivery of a managed service,” adds Downie.

Nowadays organizations consider replacing ‘legacy systems’ like mainframe with cloud, however mainframe was considered as cloud-in-a-box. “Introducing ‘zCloud’ to the market, it enables clients to reduce operational costs either by running elements of their z workload in the cloud, or, potentially, re-placing their current in-house machine with a cloud based solution,” delineates Downie.

Our mainframe team assists clients individually; works as a team, delivers projects, and takes on responsibility for a delivery of a managed service

Equally, the company plans to reduce costs by consolidating Oracle workloads and associated licensing by moving their current large server farms onto zCloud.

RSM was called in to help separation of workload at a large bank, necessitated by government decree, following on from the UK financial crisis. The client had a requirement to adapt a new IT Infrastructure, with System z. Addressing a client’s dilemma on the strategic front, RSM with its skilled teams, consultancy, and managed services negotiated various ISV software licensing issues arising and saved £20 million for the clients. “Our clients consider our team as their ‘Ally’, for our reliability, agility, and price point,” asserts Downie.

RSM also offers a number of niche software tools, each selected for delivering unique and significant value in addressing certain known issues within a z environment, at the same time targeting a rapid ROI. The company is one of the founding members of the associated Open Mainframe Project.

Over the years, RSM has built a flawless reputation for consistently delivering a ‘best practice approach’: whether specific skills; technical consultancy; support services; software and training. In the days to come, the firm will work toward becoming become the leading provider of reliable skills, on an agile basis, at a price point the clients can afford. “In the future, RSM will continue to build both zCloud and Managed Service offerings for the clients in the mainframe aspect,” ends Downie.