Business Case
ITS did not have the expertise in-house to efficiently manage and adapt certain systems to meet evolving requirements. So, they turned to a consultant to improve efficiency, achieve stability, and minimize interruption of service to the customers.
A consultant was required to assist the System Team with various tasks, including installation, upgrades, and maintenance of Open VMS on Alpha and Integrity Servers. ITS expected the consultant to setup and monitor backup processes and establish restore procedures, allocate storage for HPE OpenVMS, Windows, and UNIX systems as requested; assist in planning of future storage requirements for OpenVMS; support teams of application programmers and database architects to create solutions to meet business goals; perform off-hours as needed for maintenance tasks or emergency needs; provide support for internal users and external data exchange partners; perform optimization and tuning activities including capacity planning, tracking historical usage, trending future resource needs, modifying resource allocations as needed; providing recommendations on technical architecture, and the performance of enhancements to the OpenVMS operating system as required.
CMA responded to this opportunity through the competitive New York State Procurement Hourly Based Information Technology Services Contract.
The Solution
Our CMA consultant was successfully evaluated, technically screened, and determined to be the most cost-effective solution out of 20 Vendors supporting NYSPro needs.
CMA’s consultant provides OpenVMS system support for 25 systems, serving users throughout New York State. He has performed extensive system designs and upgrades; administered a large complex VMS environment configuring and administering print queues, user accounts, TCP/IP services, security policies, and systems performance monitoring and analysis.
The CMA consultant provides the ability to maintain the OpenVMS environment with an eye to current standards of reliability, performance and security. In addition, the solution provides the expertise to guide that environment into the future.
CMA’s consultant combines the knowledge gained from VMS experience with an intimate knowledge of the business needs and practices of the organization to implement desirable changes and provide advice regarding future direction of the organization.
The Results
By utilizing CMA’s consultant, the customer realized substantial gains in the efficient management of their OpenVMS environment in two ways. First, the customer’s OpenVMS environment was made more stable and efficient, as well as conformant to best practices in system and security design. Second, the customer gains by having state-of-the-art expertise available immediately to manage the ongoing systems and provide guidance for future directions.