TECH_161: Mainframe Capacity and Performance Challenges in an Outsourced Environment

Managing mainframe performance and capacity in outsourced environments presents special challenges both to the customer and to the outsourcer. Mainframe customers often lack transparency into how well their outsourcer is managing mainframe capacity and performance relative to what is optimal for the customer. The outsourcer, on the other hand, has to juggle many different and often conflicting priorities such as maximizing profit, living up to SLA’s , and ensuring happy customers. Often the outsourcer is working with at least three different cost structures – their external cost, their internal cost allocation to different lines of business, and their billing model towards the customers. Seldom are these well aligned and or the relationship between them well understood by the people making capacity and performance decisions.