Jim Cudworth
Mainframe services and technical operations director
For more than 25 years my job has been keeping IBM Z environments running for clients who cannot afford downtime, and bringing them back when something goes wrong. That has meant 24x7x365 production support, managed services for clients with no technical staff of their own, and a full disaster recovery for New York City Health and Hospitals.
The IBM Z stack I support, around the clock
The recovery at New York City Health and Hospitals
A water disaster took the environment down, and the client had no internal technical staff to run its own recovery. My team at Trident Services did all of the work. Step through what happened.
The water disaster
Water damage takes the client's mainframe environment out of service. There is no internal technical staff on the client side to lead a response.
- Production
- Down
- Running from
- Nowhere yet
- Client tech staff
- None
- Recovery plan
- Original
- Restore attempts
- 0
Months operating from the DR site
Not started
Result: all in-scope systems restored on the first attempt, after five to six months of operating from the DR site.
Four areas of responsibility
Most of my career has been spent on the services side of IBM Z: running the support, the delivery, and the recovery for clients whose operations depend on the mainframe.
Mainframe services and operations
Round-the-clock production support, operating system upgrades, health checks, and storage. That includes a client platform upgrade to current COBOL and CICS product levels with a z16 hardware upgrade, delivered on time and under budget.
Disaster recovery and business continuity
Recovery planning, rewrites, testing, and live recovery. Founding President of a Disaster Recovery User Group, and a presenter at GUIDE and SHARE.
Managed services and delivery
Service bureau delivery, staff augmentation, and client-defined SLAs, backed by a vendor network of more than 12 partners including Rocket Software, Software AG, Park Place Technologies, HCL, and Optina.
Mainframe security
Secured mainframe environments across all three major security products, with an IBM RACF certification and hands-on support for client compliance audits.
Accounts and results
The clients and numbers I have carried delivery responsibility for.
- New York City Health and Hospitals
Full disaster recovery after a water disaster. Rewrote the recovery and restored all in-scope systems on the first attempt.
- Kern County
Took over full managed services from the prior provider for a county with no internal technical staff.
- Sears
Delivery responsibility for an account running about $1M per month.
- Alaska Airlines
An 11-year client relationship that followed me across roles, including support for the account's compliance audit.
- Client SLAs
About 95 percent overall service rate against client-defined SLAs, print output included, reported to each client every month.
- Services growth
Built the services business at Trident from zero, a line the company did not have before, and grew it about 8 percent per year.
- IBM
Built the service offerings that earned and held IBM primary Business Partner status at Mainline.
- Budgets and teams
Managed operating budgets up to about $2M, and led technical teams of more than 22 people, including 8 subcontractors.
Career record
-
Apr 2025 to Jun 2026
Services Director
BCL Mainframe Services, McHenry, Illinois
- Stood up and led a 4-person services team at an early-stage mainframe services startup, building its market offerings, including 24x7 technical support and software upgrades.
- Built a delivery network of more than 12 vendor partners across software, hardware, and support on the IBM Z stack.
- Supported the ServiceNow implementation and migration for services operations, and owned facilities management, hardware and software.
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Sep 2011 to Apr 2025
Services Director
Trident Services
- Ran the full disaster recovery for New York City Health and Hospitals and restored all in-scope systems on the first attempt.
- Built the services business from zero and grew it about 8 percent per year across my tenure.
- Took over full managed services for Kern County, displacing the prior provider.
- Delivered against client-defined SLAs at an overall service rate of about 95 percent across secured mainframe environments using RACF, ACF2, and Top Secret.
- Rebuilt the client billing program and stood up the end-to-end SOW, contract execution, and contract completion processes the business ran on.
-
Mar 1999 to Sep 2011
Services Director
Mainline
- Built and led a technical services team of more than 22, including 8 subcontractors, delivering iSeries (AS/400) and zSeries services to clients.
- Built the service offerings that earned and held IBM primary Business Partner status.
- Supported the compliance audit for the Alaska Airlines account.
- Served as founding President of a Disaster Recovery User Group, and presented at GUIDE and SHARE.
-
Earlier career
Technical Service Manager and Systems Programmer
Komatsu, Heavy Equipment Division, and prior roles
- Grew from managing the US data center to managing technical support across the global data centers, which consolidated from six to five during my tenure, and led enterprise software procurement worldwide.
- Built the end-user chargeback system that allocated IT cost back to the business.
- Systems programming foundation: OS installations and migrations, telecom-to-CICS migration, and ISAM-to-VSAM conversions.
Education and community
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Computer Science
Certification and training
IBM RACF certification. IBM, Amdahl, and management training programs.
User groups
Founding President of a Disaster Recovery User Group. Presenter at GUIDE and SHARE.