At its recent quarterly analyst
briefing Broadcom Mainframe reviewed their performance to date, announced their
new enterprise security products, and had clients describe successful projects
where Broadcom’s products and services led to significant benefits using
in-place IT infrastructure and cloud integration. All helping to validate
Broadcom’s partnering strategy to help customers achieve their goals and overcome
critical business challenges.
Broadcom also discussed their
own successful efforts at adapting operations and strategies to deal with the
challenges of a business environment hampered by Covid-19-driven restrictions
and controls.
Broadcom elaborated on its
commitment to an “open-first” product strategy. They are committed to building
on an extensive existing foundation of open technologies and expanding the use
of the ZOWE framework. Open-source education and open cloud
efforts are promoted as they deliver innovative solutions and services to customers.
Broadcom raises the bar for hybrid computing services with Broadcom Mainframe Security Insights Platform which combines their own and partner products to provide pervasive security services from endpoint all the way to the mainframe.
Here is a look at activities and
accomplishments since the last briefing.
Investment and growth
The recently announced results
of the 15th State of the Mainframe Survey[1] confirm that the mainframe continues to expand its role
in enterprise operations and transformation activities. A massive shift to
remote work, on-line commerce, and severely reduced interpersonal contacts have
escalated security requirements and staffing issues. But it also provides Broadcom
and customers multiple opportunities to leverage mainframe and existing
infrastructure strengths.
While Broadcom does not report revenues
by division, they did reveal that the revenues from the Mainframe Software
Division has grown every quarter since acquisition. This along with growing staff
(nearly 150 this year) and expanding support activities suggests that it has proven
a good investment for both Broadcom and its customers.
Adapting to an evolving Business Environment
The impact of COVID-19 affects
all vendors, whether involved in banking, manufacturing, retail, services, or
technology, all are undergoing radical change in operations and interactions
with employees, customers, and suppliers.
Broadcom adopted plans to assure
employees are protected while still providing high quality products and
services to customers. In-house staff rotate between on-site and remote work to
maintain continuity in communications and business operations. At any one time,
approximately 50% of the staff are working on-site. Customers decides if they
want to have Broadcom staff work on-site.
The broadly popular Broadcom
Vitality Program (no-cost resources assigned to a specific customer) and
Win-no-Fee services program continue at the customer’s discretion. The on-going
close relationships yield significant benefits to both parties.
On-site with customers means
that Broadcom staff are well positioned to recognize opportunity, and thereby
increase their contribution to customer success. Two customer examples demonstrate
how this can pay off.
The first example involves a
major retailer facing staffing challenges. A Broadcom Vitality Program resident
trained in basic mainframe skills had just been placed. The residents typically
work with client staff to build core skills. However, times are not normal. The
customer faced critical project deadlines as they shifted to a digital
operating model. Some staff had to be furloughed which put these deadlines at
risk.
Broadcom’s resident offered to
take on more responsibilities and a leadership role in the project. The
customer accepted. Working together, they identified new opportunities to improve
customer operations. The experience and responsibility proved beneficial and
valuable to all. And it led to the resident being offered a position as a full-time
employee.
In another instance, a financial
services customer needed to deploy a self-service capability using z/OSMF, an
IBM software product. COVID-driven staffing disruptions threatened project
completion. Broadcom was offering expanded support to assist customers. This
customer challenged Broadcom to help with the deployment. Broadcom experts
familiar with z/OSMF were assigned to assist. The deployment took just two
weeks.
These are just two examples that
reflect Broadcom’s expansive view of customer relationship and deep partnerships. We suspect more such stories exist.
Increasing Remote and Digital Services, Events, etc.
COVID’s impact is felt not only
in business models but also in how and when in-place IT infrastructure is
leveraged. Basic to Broadcom’s strategy is “meeting the customer where they
are”. This meant lots of on-site, face-to-face skills training, customer-staffed
research fellowships, etc. As discussed here[2], Broadcom offers a variety of educational and support services,
available in-person and some, on-line.
COVID restrictions and mandates
made face-to-face interaction a no-go. Even before such complications, the
popularity of classes led Broadcom to plan expansions to the curriculum with some
select classes moving on-line. COVID sped up the process.
Broadcom radically increased its
participation in on-line, on-demand, remote sessions, and digitized events.
They held fifteen remote Mainframe Innovation World Tour[3] events in ten (10) weeks. They participated in events
for SHARE, IDUG, Marist ECC, Open Mainframe Summit, etc. Registrations for The Broadcom Mainframe Technical Exchange 2020[4] held October 13th - 15th doubled
over last year’s event.
Digitized education doesn’t stop
with technical staff. A significant gap in mainframe knowledge exists among a
new generation of business and IT executives. They grew up with an intimate
familiarity of personal computers, local computing, and cloud services. But they
are sadly ill-informed on the role of the mainframe, and its critical role in
enterprise computing.
Broadcom’s Mainframe Executive
Learning Program[5] is designed for executives to learn about the “mainframe
as a strategic platform”. The inaugural session in August had 37 executive
participants. Originally an in-person class, it is now available in on-line monthly
installments.
Broadcom’s
commitment and investment to the mainframe
platform, now and for the future, was an on-going theme. This provided an
appropriate segue to a discussion about iOCO, a customer that built an entire
business model around a highly accessible mainframe. Senior iOCO executives
described how they attract and delight customers by delivering
Banking-as-a-Service across Africa. Core banking services are delivered from a
mainframe-based cloud powered by Broadcom software. Hi-level customization
allows new services and functionality to be quickly developed and reliably
delivered at scale.
Security new and evolving risks
The mainframe has a well-deserved reputation for security.
However, existing services for encryption, complex passwords, identity, and
access administration are insufficient to secure today’s enterprise operations.
Hybrid IT computing by itself poses significant security challenges. An
explosion in remote work with increasing digital contacts is driving security
risks to new levels of variety, urgency, and complexity.
A proliferation of bad actors in on-line communities
increases the risk of outsider threats in the form of false/compromised
identities/credentials, nation-state intrusion, rogue individuals, and hackers.
Insider risks are increasing in multiple ways including rogue users, password
sharing, unintentional errors, benign shortcuts to save time - all compromise security systems.
External threats escalate as remote, distributed access
raises questions of who can be trusted – the classical identity problem. Is the
user who they claim to be? Mandated regulations and standards meant to protect
personal as well as enterprise data, privacy and information have increased
financial/legal risks in policy setting and administration. To address these evolving risks, Broadcom expanded its line
of security service products and offerings. They announced their Security
Insights platform and discussed synergies with the Symantec solution.
Broadcom Security: Partnering and investing for customer success
Broadcom expanded into enterprise security in a big way. Combining Broadcom’s Mainframe Security Insights Platform, Top Secret, CA ACF2 and Symantec’s Secure services, they can now offer complete end-to-end (mainframe, distributed, cloud, endpoint, payment, etc.) security services. They have customers willing to testify to the quality and ease of implementation of the comprehensive solution.
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Image courtesy of Broadcom, Inc.
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The Broadcom’s Mainframe Security Insights platform will
identify and assess where to focus enterprise efforts to address security risks
and threats. It leverages existing security tools and capabilities to collect data
from mainframe and other infrastructure tools. Automatically correlated and analyzed
data feed standard and custom reports covering security status and risks
including:
-
Assessments
that identify risks, security gaps, health checks, etc.
-
Identify
gaps in the security lifecycle
-
Analytics-based
advice and best practices guidance risk reducing action.
Access to Security
Insights is included with licensed Broadcom Mainframe Security products. We
expect to hear more about this product. For now see: Broadcom
Mainframe Security Insights Platform.
Illustrating the workings of Broadcom’s partnership
activities, M&T Bank discussed bank-specific security challenges. They
provided details on how Broadcom services and products helped them to
significantly reduce risk and improve identity management. They described
leveraging Broadcom security services to provide an exceptional experience and
secure bank services to both employees and banking customers. And they
exemplify points made earlier about partnership as they are working with
Broadcom on future capabilities for the security portfolio.
The Final Word
Broadcom’s dedication to the success
of its customers is clear. It lies at the very core of their operations. At every opportunity, they emphasize, and
provide concrete examples, of real services related to education, analysis,
training, advisory, and research that are directed to customer success.
Broadcom is unique in the range
and number of services provided at no cost to customers. The emphasis of staff
on-site at customers is first and foremost on identifying and delivering what
is necessary for customer success. It isn’t a tactic to pump up sales, but to
get the most out of existing infrastructure and identifying opportunities to achieve
the customer’s goals.
We have promoted the concept of
identifying and tailoring services to helping customers achieve their goals. Broadcom is proving
itself not only dedicated to but significantly adept at applying that ambition.
We think their customers agree.
