When it comes to making decisions about the future of a mainframe, outsourcing is one option to consider. Of course, both sides involved in such a step have their own interests, and there is even tough competition among today’s outsourcing service providers.

Therefore, outsourcers definitely need an easy, early and deep insight into their potential “inheritance” and a curiosity about the quality and security of the given systems in terms of a clean and well maintained operating system, good security controls, proper compliance without vulnerabilities, well-established operational procedures via system automation, and other aspects. A failure of quality may result in additional costs and efforts that are hard to calculate; corresponding improvements have to be defined as prerequisites before responsibility can be fully undertaken, or can be offered as extra, paid services that are performed later.

The SF-DeepDive due diligence (DD) software package provides exactly what a mainframe outsourcer needs to get a clearer insight into given systems in a short amount of time. As an option, it can be combined with local assessment services from our company. As a kind of “Swiss Army Knife,” it provides all plug & play tools needed to deeply assess the quality and security of the configuration within a given mainframe infrastructure; if well prepared, it can be done in a one- or two-day visit. The outsourcer’s own technical experts can quickly gain a picture of their “inheritance” when they take over responsibility in the future.

SF-Sherlock’s automated 360 degree assessment and penetration simulation technologies for z/OS allow outsourcers to easily “X-ray” a potential customer’s mainframe platform to get a comprehensive view so as to fairly evaluate possible risks that would result from taking over the responsibility for a potential customer’s systems – that is, when doing a due diligence. One aspect concerns operational risks, that is, how clean and “rectangular” the given systems’ configurations are, and the other concerns security and compliance. SF-Sherlock’s comprehensive assessment report covers both aspects of quality with more than 1000 check points in total. Thanks to SF-Sherlock’s “easy installation” option, the outsourcer may perform such a “CT scan” of a given z/OS sysplex in one day. It has never been easier and more reliable to check on any “z inheritance.”

Apart from its “one shot use” for performing a deep dive during the due diligence phase, SF-Sherlock is also of great value later on. It allows outsourcers highly efficient, cost-effective and comprehensive 360-degree quality and security monitoring on clients’ mainframes so as to avoid problems through early identification. We are talking here about problems that may easily result in down times, breaches, or similar events, and, as a consequence, in “relationship problems” or even disputes. A classic feature as regards this early error detection is SF-Sherlock’s IPL simulation and constant parmlib verification. In this context, it can be connected to any SIEM, system automation or other monitoring solution, apart from sending emails.

To respond to the special demands on outsourcers in the current climate of high competition and steep obligations, we provide the option to add SF-SafeDump to the new SF-DeepDive solution package so as to perfectly fit the demands of outsourcers to provide cost-effective no-loss offers and to have all options for satisfying the expectations of more demanding clients with regards to today’s data protection, security and compliance obligations.

If you are an outsourcing service provider and think this could be of interest to your business and your team, please do not hesitate to contact us.