Freddie Robinson, Director of Technical Operations at University of Miami, wasn't looking to upgrade the school's IBM mainframe. Then he got an offer he couldn't ignore from PSR, a Canton, Massachusetts-based IBM Business Partner specializing in IBM zSeries sales and service.

"Jim Porter, a PSR rep, called and asked if I was interested in upgrading our IBM 9672 RB6 processor," says Robinson. "When I said I wasn't he asked, 'what if the upgrade would end up saving you a lot of money?'"

Intrigued enough to want to hear more, Robinson let PSR fly him to its headquarters—where Porter, PSR president Glenn Baker, and PSR Systems Vice President Andy Girard outlined an upgrade almost too good to be true. They offered to upgrade Robinson's mainframe to a zSeries, 2086 A04 model 230. They also offered to add an IFL processor, enabling Robinson to run multiple instances of Linux under the zVM operating system. Then they explained that the entire upgrade would be funded with what Robinson would save on software and maintenance fees—and that Robinson would save an additional $600,000 over the next five years.

The socks come off
The deal proceeded, unbelievably, to get even better. PSR also committed to upgrading the processor within 36 months, to a new processor that would increase his processing power by another 41 MIPS—for no charge other than an incremental increase in his software fees.

Robinson was sold.

"PSR was going to upgrade my mainframe," he says, "and they were going to add another processor that, for budgetary reasons, we weren't projecting to be able to have until fiscal year 2007 or 2008. Plus they were going to increasing my capacity by another 41 MIPS for an essentially negligible additional charge. I was getting all this without going to management for more money, and I was going to save $600,000."

"When they offered to fly me to their offices," he continues, "they promised to knock my socks off, and of course I was skeptical. But that day I left PSR with just my shoes."

PSR's Baker concedes that while the proposal he made to Robinson resulted in exceptional savings, it's not at all uncommon for PSR to significantly increase a customer's processing power, while considerably reducing the customers monthly hardware and software payments. "University of Miami is just one example of a mainframe customer that had been neglected for far too long," he says. "Our experts were able to see that they weren't taking advantage of the pricing and promotions available, and were able to step in and show them how they could bring their data center and their financing up to date."

A comprehensive proposal—and the upgrade of his career
Robinson returned to Miami with what he calls "one of the most comprehensive project proposals I've ever seen."

"Too often buying a mainframe is like buying a car, with all kinds of hidden charges," he says. "But in PSR's proposal everything was right there and easy to understand. I had all the information I needed to put it in a spreadsheet and compare it with what I was spending and calculate what I'd save. I had very little trouble selling the upgrade to management."

Once the implementation was under way, Robinson had even more cause to be impressed—in particular by PSR's exclusive ServerAssure process. With ServerAssure, PSR actually has the new mainframe shipped to its own site, where PSR and the customer can pre-configure, pre-customize and pre-test the system before installing it at the customer site. PSR includes ServerAssure as part of every mainframe installation or upgrade it performs.

"PSR did everything," says Robinson. "They ordered all the equipment, had it delivered to their location, installed it there and pre-tested it. They gave us the ability to sign on to the system remotely and customize and test it from our facility, without leaving the office. Then together with IBM they repackaged it, shipped it to our site, met the delivery here, pulled out our old processor and put in the new one, turned it on and brought it up."

It was an unprecedented experience for the data center veteran.

"I'd upgraded lots of CPUs in my career," he says. "The installation always involved additional contracting for facilities management and physical installation. It always meant programmers testing the system one LPAR at a time, and then everyone coming in on a Sunday for eight or ten hours to get it up and running. With PSR there was none of that. Everything was preinstalled and all the kinks were ironed out before the push-pull. It was the single most uneventful upgrade implementation of my entire 37-year IT career."

The service and the savings continue
Taking all the foregoing into account, Robinson wasn't entirely surprised by PSRs follow-up technical support, which he calls "superb and timely." What he didn't know was that PSR also monitors IBM's billing post-sale—a practice he quickly came to value in terms of dollars saved.

"During the first quarterly billing cycle PSR found that we had been over-billed to the tune of $68,000," he says. "I wouldn't have caught this until the end of the year, when I ran out of money on my purchase order. PSR caught it because they take the time to monitor and audit my account. They notified IBM of the error, and IBM sent me a check for the full amount."

In retrospect, Robinson wonders if he should have been so surprised. "I've worked with lots of partners before," he says, "but when I first sat down with PSR there was an instant click, something instinctual that told me this was going to work. And even before we met, the fact that they flew me to their location, instead of coming down here, struck me as unique and excellent business sense. I could meet all their people and see all the equipment that would be at my disposal, and they could do the same for three or four people each day instead of traveling two or three times a week for a lot more money. I thought that anyone that good at saving money for themselves would save me money, too."

Raising the bar
On top of all its other benefits, the upgrade netted Robinson a promotion, and not a small amount of internal notoriety. In fact, the deal's only downside may be the standard it set for future deals.

"Now the expectation is if you're going to do an IT project, you can do it without additional funding," he says. "And if you can't, the CIO will tell you it's not quite as good a deal as mine. People here call it 'The Freddie Factor.'"

But Robinson gives most of the credit for the deal to PSR.

"Sure it was a feather in my cap, but I didn't do the deal," he says. "PSR did it. All I did was bring it back and sell it to management, which was easy. PSR did the hard part."