“Cloud400™ is less expensive than the cost we pay for IBM hardware and software support. Plus we get that added benefit of better disaster recovery, no SunGard fees and no extra expense for backup tapes.”
Background
Ullico, Inc. is a privately-held insurance and financial services holding company. Founded in 1925, Ullico is one of the largest insurers, risk solutions and investment managers focused on the union marketplace in the United States. It is based in Washington, D.C.
Ullico, Inc. provides specialty insurance and investment products to labor organizations, union employers, municipalities and institutional investors, as well as union members and retirees.
Ullico had moved its custom COBOL policy administration and workers’ compensation applications from an IBM mainframe to their iSeries. More recently, Ullico supports 40 users on an IBM i5 9406-520 model 7735 with 2800 CPW and 2 LPARs.
Ullico’s OS400 IT staff consists of 2 in operations and 4 developers.
Need To Migrate Ingrained Applications
Marc Zinsmeister, Ullico’s Director of IT Operations, explains, “We were looking to migrate our specialty insurance application off our i5 hardware. The problem we had was this and other i5 applications that are on our i5 are so ingrained in our business, that the business has a hard time retiring them and looking for other solutions to replace them.
“So we were looking for ways to keep those applications in-house but move the responsibility for the server support off our premises. While these custom COBOL applications had suited us well, we wanted to replace them with more modern applications that run on Windows, which is our primary platform. We figure it would probably take us a minimum of 18 months to find and implement a replacement, so we wanted to explore interim options for our i5 applications.”
Recompiling Our Key Applications To Windows Was Cost Prohibitive
Marc continues, “The first solution we found was a company that was willing to come in and basically recompile the i5 applications to Windows hardware. As we looked at that solution, it was intriguing to us since we do run all Windows servers aside from the i5. The problem was that it was very cost-prohibitive. With an initial bid of $95,000, we felt that was too expensive. It was not worth the effort for applications we were still looking to retire and we would only use for a few years.”
Customized Applications Hard To Replace
“These were applications we had maintained on our IBM mainframe. They were then ported to the iSeries. For the last couple of years we have been looking for newer policy administration systems to replace them. But because these systems have been working so well for so long and they have been customized to meet our business, it has been hard to find an out-of the-box application to replace them. So we are still looking to replace them, but we need to at least maintain these applications for a couple of years while we search for the right product.”
End Of V5R4 Support Requires Upgrade
As Marc explains, “Another driving factor was if we were going to maintain them on the iSeries, at version V5R4, we realized there was an end-of-support date coming up in September 2013. So if we were going to have to maintain these products, we knew we had to do the upgrade to V7R1 no matter what.”
Need For Disaster Recovery
“Another factor that concerned us was our Disaster Recovery model required us to have access to an iSeries system. Currently we contract with SunGard. SunGard just offers a single unit on a first-come-first-serve basis. In the event of disruption, whoever got on site first would be first to use this server. This meant all others were out of luck and had to wait. The more we thought about it, the more we did not like that approach. This meant a hosted solution would allay disaster recovery concerns.”
Cloud400 Less Than $15,200 Per Year For IBM Support And SunGard DR
“So, we were spending about $11,600 for IBM hardware and software support and $3,600 per year for SunGard — about $15,200 combined. We were thinking we needed to explore some more cost-effective options. That’s about the time my i5 Administrator got a letter from Source Data Products, Inc. about Cloud400 and brought it to my attention.”
Free Trial And Comprehensive Assessment Makes Cloud400 Easy To Try
“Our first contact with Cloud400 went very well. They gave us a brief overview of the services. One of the things we really liked about Cloud400 was the free trial so we could kick the tires and get a feel for what we would be getting into.
“Our next step was the assessment. The process was very painless. I got a Cloud400 Assessment form. Easy to fill out and just a couple of reports to run on our system and send back.
“We then had a very short assessment conference call with Bob Kennedy. It was also very painless. We spoke about our needs based on the assessment form and the reports we sent back. The Cloud400 guys were very helpful describing how we would go forward with Cloud400 and any aspect we would need to look at for future growth.
“You guys took the information I provided and came back with a quote in a couple of days. It couldn’t go more smoothly.”
Cloud400 Flexible For Longer Testing Period
“At that point, we explained that we would have a longer testing period than your typical 60 day trial. Cloud400 was very flexible and explained that we could test as long as we needed to make sure we were comfortable with the Cloud400 solution.
“When we got the Cloud400 proposal, we had some questions about how Cloud400 did the hosting, what the data center was like and what the Cloud400 disaster recovery procedure was like. You stepped us through your procedures and got us comfortable with it. We couldn’t be happier.”
Cloud400 Team Provided Excellent Support
“The Cloud400 team of Bob Kennedy, Darren Anderson and Bob Hall – those guys have been great to get us up and running. They have been very accommodating and attentive. Doing any kind of tape load, system updates, getting on conference calls with us to work anything out. I know Darren and my teammate Tyrone have been working well together to understand what needs to be done to get this working. Darren is great with his iSeries knowledge. He has actually been able to teach my iSeries admin a few things. You guys have been great in helping move towards the go-live date. I can’t ask for anything more.”
VPN Connects To System
“The testing process was we essentially created a full backup of our system and sent the tape to Cloud400. You guys took about a day to restore it to one of the Cloud400 POWER i servers. We worked with Bob Hall to create the VPN tunnel to allow us to connect to the system. We got the VPN set up in under an hour. Darren worked with us to get the user accounts set. We logged in. We basically opened it up to our end-users so they could log in and check their applications to make sure everything was working as expected.
“After about 2-3 weeks of testing Cloud400 at V5R4, Darren upgraded us to V7R1. Once that was done, that’s when we started our true regression testing. We ran our month-end batches, our reporting, and conducted report comparisons between our on-premise i5 server and Cloud400 at V7R1. This process took about 45 days.”
V7R1 DB2 Has Stricter SQL Conditions
“We ran into a few minor issues. We noticed the new V7R1 had stricter SQL conditions. Our development team went back and fixed those issues, which we knew we would have encountered regardless of the path we took. The development team rewrote some of their code and retested to get everything working properly.”
Cloud400 Results — Exactly What We’re Looking For
“At the conclusion of our regression testing, the results are exactly what we are looking for. The Cloud400 reports are exactly as expected with our i5 production reports. We have used some tolls to compare numbers and everything lines up.
“In terms of response time, we noticed Cloud400 latency was about the same to better than our i5 on-premise server sitting right upstairs.
“Now, on the business side, our users log in and don’t know the difference if they are on our i5 or your Cloud400.”
Absolutely Recommend Cloud400
“I would absolutely recommend Cloud400. I would tell anyone who would want to know that not only are the Cloud400 folks accommodating and knowledgeable, the cost of Cloud400 is definitely an enticement in and of itself. Cloud400 is less expensive than the cost we pay for IBM hardware and software support. Plus we get that added benefit of better disaster recovery, no SunGard fees and no extra expense for backup tapes.”