IT organizations responsible for maintaining business-critical mainframe infrastructures need the right tools, experience, and expertise to keep their enterprises running smoothly. These infrastructures must meet the most demanding performance and availability requirements while minimizing risk for both systems and data. Today, Brocade is focused on helping IT organizations build a reliable technology foundation that maximizes efficiency and cost savings without sacrificing security or business continuity. Brocade Mainframe Services provide a wide range of field-proven tools and expertise to support the most critical business objectives.

To optimize the performance of their mainframe storage infrastructures, today's organizations require highly detailed information. For instance, they might want to know what kind of performance improvements to expect in advance of a migration to FICON, or they might need better information for more effective capacity planning. Organizations that require performance data beyond the capabilities of RMF reports and SAS can utilize the Brocade Mainframe Storage I/O Healthcheck to better analyze, optimize, and manage their storage environments.

Many organizations with mainframe environments have already implemented FICON to take advantage of its many benefits. However, some organizations have found that effective sizing for an infrastructure expansion can be a significant challenge. Others have yet to make the move to FICON due to the perceived complexity or cost of migration. Regardless of whether organizations are planning new or expanded FICON infrastructures, a Brocade Mainframe Infrastructure ROI Analysis can provide a clearer picture of the true costs and ROI of a FICON-related project.

Planning a migration from ESCON to FICON is rarely a simple task. It requires a detailed, well-designed strategy to help ensure a safe and effective migration. Given the complexities, and the business-critical nature of mainframe environments, today's organizations might not have the in-house resources to properly design, plan, and implement a migration to FICON. For many, the Brocade ESCON to FICON Migration Implementation Service can help close that skills gap and provide expertise for a smooth migration.

Many organizations that have considered deploying or migrating to FICON are concerned about their level of knowledge and experience. Before undertaking such a project, they need to quickly get up to speed on the latest FICON advances and understand best-practice deployment strategies. To help them build that level of understanding, Brocade offers the Advanced Mainframe Infrastructure Seminar.

Today's business pressures and legal requirements are making the availability of data more important than ever. Data must be available to comply with a wide range of industry regulations, and it must be well protected in order to reduce the risk of downtime, lost productivity, or financial exposure. As a result, today's IT organizations must utilize reliable data backup strategies that can support frequent partial backups, complete backups, and a combination of both onsite and offsite backups. Brocade Services helps organizations get the most from IntelliMagic products and meet their storage performance management goals. As part of the Brocade Performance Management Solutions, Brocade provides the following services:

• Brocade Mainframe Storage I/O HealthCheck Services
• Brocade Assessment Services
• Brocade Implementation and Management Services

In addition to mainframe-specific services, Brocade provides a wide range of related services for key objectives such as data infrastructure management, data migration, security, and business continuity.