Case Study:
Data Center Consolidation
Client Description
The client is one of the largest medical and specialty health care insurance companies in the country.
Client Situation
This client approached ISAM after acquiring another large company and was planning to consolidate data centers. The company wished to identify software savings within the two mainframe software portfolios and needed one, reconciled software database for all of its data centers.
Process for Data Center Consolidation
Once the consolidation objectives were confirmed, the ISAM process included:
- Signed confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements.
- Collected the client’s mainframe software licensing and pricing information.
- Loaded the client’s licensing and pricing data into ISAM’s Software Intelligence Database.
- Reconciled and cataloged the client’s software portfolio and developed a database repository.
- Compared the client’s data to industry “best practice” and “best in class” targets.
- Mainframe software products were reviewed for functional redundancy.
- The client’s enterprise license agreements were also carefully reviewed along with terms and conditions. The T&Cs were compared to industry “best in class” targets.
- Terms & Conditions were also reviewed for product usage rights as they related to the consolidation.
- Identified specific improvement areas and software savings opportunities.
- A product valuation analysis was also completed to determine which products were generating the greatest and the least value.
- Developed and presented a report with specific recommendations for improvement.
- The ISAM report also included suggestions for SAM best practices and tools to raise the company to “Best in Class” status for IBM software pricing.
- Upon approval of the report, ISAM prepared a final action plan for the consolidation of both data centers.
Results & Benefits
- The Data Center Consolidation service was completed in nine weeks.
- Total first-year savings: $8.5 million.