Origina
Revamping IBM Software Support and Maintenance

In October 2020, IBM announced its intention to separate the IT infrastructure services unit of its Global Technology Services (GTS) division into a new, separate public company, creating two industry-leading entities: IBM and Kyndryl. Essentially, Kyndryl would do exactly what the managed infrastructure services unit of IBM’s Global Technology Services segment did: outsource the management of enterprises’ IT infrastructure, whether it came from IBM or another vendor. But according to the new arrangement, all of IBM’s existing contracts would go to Kyndryl, while IBM would shift focus to hybrid cloud and AI technologies.

At this juncture, many of IBM’s customers re-enlisted with IBM and accompanied it on the cloud journey, while others chose to retain their tried and trusted on-premise contracts with Kyndryl. Needless to say, with the sudden shift came the need to re-adjust their IT roadmaps based on the path they chose—something that required extensive knowledge and expertise in IBM systems. The company that came to their rescue was Originia, led by two former IBM business partners, Tomás O’Leary and Rowan O’Donoghue.

Origina, leveraging its workforce of talented IBM engineers, equipped the transitioning companies with high quality support and tools to re-adjust their IT infrastructure, whether they chose on-premise or cloud. And driven by this competency, today, the company has cemented its cornerstone as a leading third-party IBM software support and value added services provider. As Origina’s services are based on a deep understanding of both IBM products and the contexts in which they are deployed, the company is helping customers maximize the ROI on their IBM products based on their IT roadmaps while also providing them with the required support and maintenance services. Right now, the company has scaled up significantly and provides support to over 100 of the world’s largest companies. “We are seeing rapid growth in our company, outstripping Gartner’s predictions for the third-party support market,” says Tomás O’Leary, founder and CEO of Origina.

A Stellar Onboarding Approach that Breeds Success

When a customer starts their journey with Origina, the company clarifies all their queries regarding IBM software support, maintenance, and security.

Not only this, Origina gets deeper into the customer's security concerns. “We take a holistic, informed approach to risk and security management that our customers find more pragmatic and appropriate to their particular contexts. It not only involves IBM products but also the surrounding business and technical contexts. As a result, we can proactively issue alerts and advisories that the customers find very easy to consume,” mentions O’Leary. Besides, Origina’s customers never have to wait long after raising a support ticket. They enjoy year-round support tied to a binding service level agreement (SLA) with response times as quickly as 30 minutes from when an issue is raised. “This, coupled with our intimate support model and our dedicated Global IBM experts, is the kind of quality that our customers require,” O’Leary adds further.

What’s more? When customers switch from IBM to Origina for software support, they enjoy fixed-cost savings that reach up to 50 percent annually. These savings are further compounded by the freedom of working with the IBM products without the burden of being stuck in a long-term contract.

The expertise of Origina can be best explained by a customer success story where a large complex financial services customer was in the process of de-commissioning a portion of their IBM on-prem estate, which by its nature was a complex task. An issue was raised by the custome as they saw that in order to extract several years worth of financial records, an expensive product upgrade of IBM Open Pages would be required, which would also include a lot of interoperability issues, risk, and time. When Origina learned of the issue, its experts managed to engineer a solution within a week. The solution allowed the project to progress at a faster pace, and following the same approach, Origina was able to help the customer to accelerate their de-commission plans for several other related applications. O’Leary underscores, “We also helped them achieve clarity on IBM licence position, and reduce their compliance exposure.” With the help of Origina, the customer massively overachieved on their IBM related fixed costs reduction initiative.

Such success stories are a testament to Origina’s commitment to offering robust support and maintenance of both cloud and on-prem IBM software. Owing to such customer-centric offerings, Origina was recognized by Gartner as a representative vendor in the independent third-party software support market. It is also important to note that the company experienced a 426 percent YoY increase in new business from existing customers. Origina attributes this rapid growth to the global companies’ need to streamline costs associated with maintaining the performance of legacy IBM products. Riding on such a successful trajectory, Origina will continue to offer dedicated support and maintenance to its customers.