Broadcom invests in Client success, partnering to drive customer’s growth

A recent Broadcom Mainframe Analyst briefing began with an overview of their business
performance, followed by a description of their current strategy which is grounded in how they are “Investing in Client Success”. Broadcom’s plans are impressively ambitious as we will discuss and provide some advice for existing and prospective customers.

Overview of strategy and planning

Broadcom has a clear strategy to win client confidence and build market share. They are committed to providing mainframe programs, products, and services that will drive client success. This will be achieved with a dedicated focus on helping mainframe shops to embrace open concepts, enhance cloud integration, and enable enterprise efforts that advance innovation. In short, partnering with clients to achieve success thru growth.

Specifically, Broadcom developed a strategic plan targeting the areas of:

1. DevOps and the Open mainframe – aiming to speed application development and delivery with an enhanced offering of more integrated and open tools and solutions. The Open Mainframe Project Zowe is the core framework for Broadcom’s open strategy implemented across their portfolio through a common API model.
2. Security and compliance – modernizing security capabilities for the platform. Addressing skills through increased levels of automation in addition to adding and training staff to broaden skills to improve Broadcom’s customer support abilities. Use of Zowe will allow them to further expand product integration across the portfolio.
3. AIOps and Automation – expanding the use of and leveraging AI to increase automation of mainframe operations. Leverages the Zowe framework to drive broader integration across platforms.

To accomplish all this, Broadcom continues to increase their investment in product capability and numerous beyond-code programs specifically targeted to address:

1. People – to expand and enhance in-house staffs in product development and customer services/support efforts.
2. Skills enhancement – by extending skills and growing the number of Broadcom’s field-facing resources.
3. Relationship building – expand and deepen relationships with partners, as well as existing and potential new customers through high touch, in-depth tours, technology/technical exchanges, conferences and special (training, education, technology, etc.) programs.
4. Solutions – expand efforts to materially extend solution offerings, enhance consumption licensing options and increase product innovation.

Broadcom is proving that they are invested in client success with direct action. A major factor will be to revise CA’s pre-acquisition end-of-life plans for a variety of products. CA had planned to end support for older products. Broadcom recognized that forcing a migration off an existing embedded product could lead to major problems for customers. This held true even when a clearly defined migration path (to a supported product) existed.

Therefore, Broadcom cancelled end-of-life plans electing to continue support for the foreseeable future. If circumstances change, Broadcom is committed to minimizing disruption to customers. Naturally, this decision has considerable support and attraction in the existing customer base.

Importantly, Broadcom has undertaken an ambitious employee growth program. Last year, Broadcom added 225 new personnel, with over 50 more new hires during the first quarter of 2020. Their plan is to exceed those numbers during calendar year 2020. This activity will proceed as quickly as COVID restrictions allow.

Product – support and implementation

Broadcom announced the acquisition of CA Technologies in July of 2018; what they actually received was a mixed portfolio of mainframe software that CA had acquired over many years. Since closing the acquisition in November of 2018, Broadcom had over 400 requisitions out for new hires, with 200+ starting in their FY 2019. Over 60 new hires have already started in FYQ1 2020. We do not know the exact numbers of the total number of technical staff coming on-board as Broadcom staff with the purchase. In the past we spoke with some of the new staff. Based on our past interactions with them, they bring impressive talents to Broadcom.

Broadcom’s website lists the products along with the following details:

1. Product name
2. A brief functional description
3. Available documentation
4. Support

To fully appreciate what follows, you might want to examine the product list. Especially look for products critical to enterprise operations.

Broadcom’s Mainframe Software Division will support their products in a varied data center environment. The products must be able to function properly even when interacting with non-mainframe and distributed hardware. Broadcom is clearly not responsible for hardware defects, but their products can be impacted by hardware problems. Support staff must be aware of and able to deal with those situations.

Today, Broadcom software support plans extend only to z/OS operating system environments. They have no plans to support products running under z/Linux or other operating systems.

Broadcom doesn’t state the exact number of products acquired. Our rough count identified slightly over 200. Most include product documentation and support . While Broadcom does not sell nor directly support products below, Broadcom products will interact and/or work with IBM and other vendor’s z/OS related technologies. Specifically included in that category are:

• Multiple security products including Top Secret ACF/2.
• COBOL -- a popular language for mainframe business apps, and other languages.
• Popular mainframe databases including IDMS, DB2, Oracle.
• VSAM -- an access method.
• Datacenter connectivity with distributed systems (Widows, Linux).
• CICS -- the popular transaction processor.
• TSO -- the programming development & debugging tool.

Examples of supported acquired products, include:

• CA auditor for z/OS Product – identifies and controls z/OS security risks, including automated audit software. (The documentation is an excellent example of what customers dream of getting but frequently do not.)
• CA COBOL XE – allows COBOL programmers with no knowledge of CICS command line to develop CICS COBOL online applications.
• CA Fast Recovery for DB2 for z/OS – restores DB2 table spaces and indexes.
• CA Top Secret – z/OS security software.

Potential customers may want to check the support status of other non-Broadcom/CA products. For example, while many Broadcom products will connect to IBM’s RACF security product; the RACF product itself is not supported by Broadcom directly. We look more closely at the security product set after summarizing the current overall state of product support/maintenance. Of course, this is not a Broadcom specific issue.

It is a major challenge to provide on-going internal and customer-facing operational maintenance/support for a large and varied product set. It requires programmers with in-depth skills across a variety of specialties. For example, an OS specialist must know not only z/OS in depth, but also a fair amount about z-hardware.

In addition, although many of the acquired products were not written in modern development languages such as C++, most of the new development in Broadcom’s core products do use modern languages. All major new Broadcom product innovations, new features and web front ends are either Java, C, Metal C, JavaScript, Typescript, Node.js, Angular or React. Therefore, development and debugging staff will need assembly language, and potentially other language skills. Broadcom did cite they have successfully recruited and hired skilled assembler programmers.

Next, as organizations open up the platform and integrate with hybrid/cloud, proper mainframe security can’t be assumed or ignored. Broadcom’s overarching security strategy focuses in three areas – modernization to bring capabilities such as MFA or Data Loss Prevention to the mainframe, broadening value beyond Mainframe access control to help enterprises assess their overall risk posture across platforms through API’s and integrations with SIEM’s and SOC’s, and addressing the skills gaps through improved security automation based upon best practices.

Broadcom commented that many customers were not necessarily aware of the downstream effects of security changes to mainframe procedures. Clearly, this can lead to serious problems. Recognizing the risk, Broadcom will offer a variety of options. These include extended support services and new APIs. Another option is security training program specifically for customers. A mainframe person knowledgeable about hardware, z/OS, and RACF could learn and understand the operations of ACF/2 and/or Top Secret.

For decades, mainframe security has been an industry benchmark. Today, mainframe environmental changes and new product support requirements are introducing new challenges. For example, functional changes in the hardware, such as adding hardware implemented encryption can mandate adjustments to existing OS and security systems.

The release of a new IBM Z model can necessitate changes to a daunting product list, extending throughout the datacenter, even to Windows and Linux servers. The need for enterprise asset protection, e.g. of customer data, extends across all datacenter infrastructure not just the mainframe. The potential impact on security of change must be determined and risk remediated or eliminated.

New government or organizational mandated regulations are additional sources of potential disruption. Consider California’s legislated consumer data rights, or the EU’s GPDR laws. The full impact of these laws is only now becoming clear. While some US companies will remove EU customers to avoid GDPR rules, the trend is clear. Future laws can significantly impact security software procedures.

Potentially, many customers will need training to maintain a secure, compliant environment. Both Broadcom and customer support staff will need expertise and education to address evolving issues emerging from existing and emerging privacy laws. Experienced staff need on-going training to upgrade and maintain skills that identify, remove, and/or neutralize vulnerabilities in any part of the data center infrastructure. Broadcom’s acquisition of Symantec’s enterprise security staff will surely help them.

It is neither easy to find nor inexpensive to hire staff with the requisite security skills. CIO magazine recently published its 2020 State of CIO research. The top 3 of the 12 most difficult IT jobs to fill were roles in cybersecurity, data science and AI! All areas of interest and focus in Broadcom’s strategic planning.

As mentioned earlier, Broadcom has had significant success finding and hiring qualified individuals. They are reasonably certain of their ability to continue to do so when the current (pandemic related) hiring freeze ends.

The Final Word

Broadcom has an aggressive plan for internal expansion to build and increase market share built on a broad base of products and services. Clearly, they understand and have been preparing to deal with the challenges. They have and are assembling an impressive team to implement their plans to meet their goals. Success will require extraordinary focus, commitment, and effort at every level of the organization.

Complicating Broadcom’s efforts is the impact of economic and operational disruption of mainframe datacenters from the COVID19-driven economic disruption. There are bound to be changes as the economy recovers. Broadcom and their customers will need a strong commitment from both its management and staff to respond to the challenges that are certainly coming. Of course, these changes will impact their competition as well.

Broadcom provided us more detailed interaction with senior staff. They took the time to reveal and discuss plans and strategy with us. As mentioned, we have experience with some of the executive management and staff extending over a number of years. That history provides us a high level of confidence in their ability to address the challenges mentioned.

We have also seen the amazing results that can happen with a well-managed, effectively inspired team. We look forward to hearing more from Broadcom as it moves forward. We wish them all the best. Watch for our upcoming commentary on Broadcom’s most recent briefing.