The Client

This US state is home to over five million residents and encompasses a diverse mix of urban, rural, and mountainous regions. This makes the delivery of all public government services—from public health to family assistance—a complex and high-stakes challenge requiring robust, always-available infrastructure. The state government, and its Office of Information Technology (OIT), relies on its mainframe to support mission-critical systems that deliver essential services to its most vulnerable citizens. These systems include public health, family assistance, and other core government functions that require high availability, reliability, and guaranteed security.

The Obstacles Faced

The state’s mainframe infrastructure was aging and presented significant risks to its ability to serve its citizens effectively:

• The hardware was outdated and no longer compliant
• Software was several versions behind, reaching end-of-life support
• A shrinking pool of skilled professionals capable of maintaining and troubleshooting the mainframe posed an increasing risk to continuity
• The services supported by the mainframe were vital for the state’s most vulnerable citizens

The state needed to modernize its infrastructure without disrupting critical services. A failure in these systems could have had severe consequences for citizens who rely on state-provided support.

The Journey

When an outage brought new urgency, a recommendation from Dell—a trusted technology partner to the state—brought a renewed focus on the need for modernization and the mitigation of operational and staffing risks. Ensono had been engaging with the state’s CTO over several months, and had built up a good understanding of the challenges and potential solutions.

After thorough evaluations, Ensono proposed a five-year Mainframe as a Service (MFaaS) agreement. The scope of our MFaaS delivers:

• Fully managed hosting and support – Providing, maintaining and managing the mainframe, data center and staff required to operate, monitor and support the system 24/7 for uninterrupted service.
• Risk elimination & compliance – Modernizing hardware and software to eliminate risks associated with aging infrastructure, security vulnerabilities and staffing shortages, while delivering full regulatory compliance.
• Future-proofing & scalability – Delivering a stable, long-term modernization strategy with a scalable infrastructure that grows with the state’s needs, supporting cloud integration and future digital transformation initiatives.
• Security & disaster recovery – Implementing high-level security controls, encryption, and audit compliance to protect citizen data, while delivering robust disaster recovery for system continuity in any scenario.
• Workforce continuity & expertise – Bridging the mainframe skills gap by providing a team of 1,100+ experienced professionals, eliminating reliance on retiring state employees and providing long-term operational expertise.
• Flexible consumption model – Providing a cost-effective, OpEx-based model where the state only pays for computing and storage consumed, reducing the need for large capital investments in new hardware.

The Outcomes Achieved

The state now has a scalable, secure, and continuously supported mainframe. This has successfully:

• Eliminated operational risk by replacing outdated hardware and upgrading software to supported versions.
• Reduced the impact of staffing attrition by relying on Ensono’s dedicated mainframe experts.
• Enabled 24/7 system reliability for critical government services that citizens depend on.
• Established a future-ready platform that can scale to meet the state’s evolving needs.

Ensono and the state were able to upgrade and migrate the state’s mainframe with minimal impact and disruption to the business. The state CTO publicly shared, “…we recently finished the conversion of our mainframe to a cloud provider (Ensono, big shout out to Jim Foley and his teams who helped (us) complete the transition!!)”, highlighting the success of this project.

The Future

With a stable mainframe in place, the state is now able to leverage the platform to unlock modernization of previously frozen critical applications such as the state’s antiquated payroll system to help provide better transparency and performance at cost savings for the state. The partnership with Ensono enables the state’s technology infrastructure to remain aligned with evolving security, compliance, and performance requirements—leading to uninterrupted service delivery for years to come.

Get more client success stories like this