Assuming an acceptable risk level, 2-4-year Return on Investment (ROI) calculations are based on recouping upfront costs through increased revenue or savings during the payback period.
Upfront costs become less critical when management is confident in a project’s success and funding is available. Management will assume project benefits will be realized while upfront project costs are recouped. Secured project funding combined with realized project benefits and a reasonable payback period make a compelling case for project approval.
In this article, we’ll look at the unique advantages that IBM Z enterprises enjoy beyond traditional ROI considerations when proposing modernization investments in IBM Z tooling. These advantages can have a notable impact on how budget level decision makers evaluate and prioritize the cost, risk, and expected returns for Z modernization investments. Given this baseline, we will also summarize observations from successful customer engagements SEA has participated in over 40 years working with IBM Z enterprises.
Consider these advantages and observations when making modernization investments for updating your legacy Z enterprise batch tooling, JCL management, and report and output management systems.
What’s unique about IBM Z?
The Z Value Proposition
IBM Z enterprises are traditionally grounded in the highest reliability, efficiency, and cost optimization of any computing platform. A typical Z environment embodies decades of accumulated investments in hardware and software including:
- Operating systems
- Database management
- Security administration
- Workflow management
- Network management
- Performance management
- Testing
- Accumulated institutional knowledge embedded in high quality mission critical business applications
In other words, the Z environment is a high value asset. Z Modernization projects that require ISV tooling will probably require replacing or enhancing an existing value producing asset.
A Low Tolerance for Risk
The DNA of the IBM Z platform is grounded in reliability, availability, and quality. The owners of mainframe service delivery will closely scrutinize any proposed modernization investments introducing change that might, even for a short time, negatively impact service delivery.
Calculating the ”R” in ROI
SEA once visited with a banking IT executive who had approved an agreement for a significant amount. When asked why he had signed off on funding, he sat for a quiet moment and said, “It does not matter. the agreement is complete”.
In thinking about any experience like this, you will probably agree that adopting Agile methods and providing the latest Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) for your developers will contribute holistically to achieving strategic advantages, such as accelerated time to market and attracting the best and brightest developers. It’s worth noting that calculating a measurable ROI for an IBM Z modernization investment based on achieving these outcomes will not be easy.
The moral is: If your Z modernization business case requiring funding for ISV tooling cannot show how costs will be reduced and how outcomes will be achieved with minimal risk, be prepared for resistance.
Z Modernization needs, prioritization, funding, and outcomes
Having discussed the business case elements of cost, risk and value for Z modernization, let’s make the following observations that are worth considering as you work to identify needs, prioritize projects, secure funding, and deliver successful outcomes:
- Understand what your business and IT organizations want to achieve and why
- Engage with stakeholders to understand requirements and ways to leverage shared value
- Start by looking at your current assets
- Give the problem to your suppliers
- Consider that “more is not necessarily better”
- Plan for adoption and promote your successes
Understand what your business and IT organizations want to achieve and why
A simple thought experiment for understanding IBM Z modernization objectives might include these questions:
- What are your organization’s modernization objectives?
- How do they translate into what you are doing now?
- How might you leverage this knowledge to add value to your business?
Your business leaders may say that they want to respond to changes in customer demand more quickly. Your CIO might say she wants to contain spend, seamlessly manage workforce transition, improve collaboration, and deliver on high quality development projects more quickly. Your Development and Infrastructure organizations might say they need common tools and processes for the enterprise, more reliable testing, and defect-free continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD).
The outcomes and expectations for achieving common goals will be expressed differently depending on responsibility and leadership level. Consider outcomes derived from the “IBM Z DevOps Journey.”
Engage with other stakeholders
If you are a mainframe services manager, engage with the development organizations that rely on mainframe services. Understand modernization priorities and share your insights about what you are doing now. Look for opportunities for common gain. This process may promote better use of current tooling and introduce an opportunity to gain support for any additional investments proposed in the future.
Consider how to best leverage your existing assets
The basic wisdom of fully understanding needs from multiple vantage points and fully exploring opportunities to leverage your current tooling should be self-evident.
One of SEA’s long-time Insurance customers has deployed an advanced JCL testing service across multiple mainframe systems. From any requesting system on the mainframe (e.g. development LPAR), they can simulate runtime conditions in a target system, (e.g. production LPAR), execute a highly predictive test or run-time outcome, and have the results returned to the requesting system. It is one of the most advanced, high-quality testing services that an organization can orchestrate. Up until two years ago, their JCL testing service was only accessible using mainframe ISPF edit macros or batch execution user requests.
As the customer’s DevOps practice matured, the priority for common enterprise tooling and earlier predictive (e.g. “shift left”) testing was clearly established. Their developers opened a dialogue with their mainframe subject matter experts about current tooling capabilities. The developers found they could take advantage of vendor supported REST APIs to enable consumption of their advanced testing service through Eclipse IDEs, Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS Code), and distributed build tools such as GitLab and Jenkins. This modernization investment is low cost, low risk and is quickly being achieved!
Give the problem to your suppliers
The industry annual maintenance rate for Z tools is +/- 20% of current license fees. ISVs “walking the walk” in Z modernization should be taking the same investment steps with their tooling as any other Z organization that is investing in this area. Modernized mainframe tooling enables an organization to decouple choices for their user interface layer, application layer and database layer when orchestrating their deployments. Modernized tooling also allows them to use organizational tooling (common services) for their build, test, and run personnel.
If your current supplier will not or cannot modernize its tooling, consider alternate suppliers. If your new potential ISV supplier understands the demands of the hybrid Z enterprise and is serious about maintaining customer value, they will be prepared to address your demands for reduced costs, high quality, and accelerated delivery…with no ambiguity!!!
Consider that “more is not necessarily better”
If a vendor is spending more time on addressing product capabilities that are not base requirements, seriously consider the potential negative impacts on performance, runtime, unneeded complexity, added resource requirements, and your implementation timeline.
SEA has participated in numerous customer conversations where cost and resource overruns, failed project plans, and great frustration could have been avoided.
We are not suggesting future capabilities are not worth considering. It would be unwise not to reasonably plan for change. We are suggesting that interesting capabilities beyond core replacement needs should be considered on a different priority level in your business case. New capabilities should be evaluated closely in terms of added cost, risk, and complexity. Your ISV should be providing value added conversion assistance at no additional cost. If you are considering longer term potential benefits, make sure they are clearly identified in a subsequent delivery phase after “like functionality replacement”.
Plan for adoption and promote your successes
If your investments in IBM Z modernization do not show early positive trajectory in adoption, you are losing momentum at a critical time. Understanding that resistance to change is inevitable and planning for resistance ahead of time will pay dividends.
Consider the following when planning for adoption and encountering resistance to change:
- Orchestrating common tooling with greater user freedom of choice in the selection of User interface, Application layer, and Database layer.
- Draw adoption by highlighting productivity gains that can be easily demonstrated and make sure those gains are clearly promoted.
- Prioritize training and regular feedback from your user community.
- Build early momentum by prioritizing and advertising successes from lower risk, shorter timeline, and lower complexity projects.
- Ask your early adopters to share their successes and participate in high leverage forums for promoting adoption.
Leveraging IBM Z’s unique qualities for modernization
In this article, we discussed some of the advantages and unique characteristics of IBM Z that can inform organizational perspectives on cost, risk, and value for a modernization business case. We also highlighted observations from successful projects distilled over 42 years of customer experience working with Z enterprises.
Remember, multiple decades of great customer successes on IBM Z have not occurred because of luck. The platform was designed and continues to deliver value based on fundamental building blocks for long-term business success.
We invite you to consider these advantages and observations when making IBM Z modernization investments. Please contact SEA to discuss opportunities for modernizing your IBM Z systems.
Wishing you great success on your Z modernization journey.
