When you abandon ship, you lose access to everything you had on the ship
except for what you haul into the life boat. That requires exquisite
planning and a whale of a life boat. Real life story:
I once worked for a company that had previously been a big user of IMS. By
the time I arrived, IMS was long gone after being replaced by other data
base software. One day the finance folks called up and asked whether we
could resurrect some old IMS files that would document an opportunity to
save the company a boatload in some kind of tax overpayments. The number
was worth some research. We put our heads together and decided that
-- we still had valid backup tapes of the files in question
-- we had no chance in h*ll of making any sense of the data without an IMS
to unscramble it
Besides not being licensed for IMS, we saw no prospect of reanimating a
version that could process the data in an intelligible way. We had to give
up.
A more compelling reason to retain not just restorability but usability of
old data is the onerous demand of legal and financial requirements inherent
in running any modern enterprise. Maybe municipal government lives beyond
such mundane mandates, but I would be shocked if any 'business' entity
could sail along with historical immunity. After as little as five years,
how simple would it be to put Humpty Dumpty back together again?
.
.
JO.Skip Robinson
Southern California Edison Company
Electric Dragon Team Paddler
SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager
626-302-7535 Office
323-715-0595 Mobile
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Peggy Andrews
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]
ACRAMENTO.ORG> To
Sent by: IBM [email protected]
Mainframe cc
Discussion List
<[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject
.EDU> Going unsupported - time to fold?
07/07/2008 01:31
PM
Please respond to
IBM Mainframe
Discussion List
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]
.EDU>
Management has decided that it is time for the mainframe to go. They've
got
a project manager looking at a mainframe decommissioning project (feel my
pain?). We are current now on z/os 1.7 and had ordered the 1.9 ServerPac
and are in the beginning stages of that. Suddenly this project manager has
decided that the majority of our applications will be moved off of the
mainframe by the end of the year. Along with that, they have my supervisor
asking for a risk assessment of NOT doing (completing) the 1.9 upgrade.
I would like to answer intelligently - not emotionally. Of course, I know
that
EOS for 1.7 on September 30, means that we will be "unsupported". As far
as
I know, I could still look for existing fixes, but could not expect phone
support
or new fixes.
Is this correct?
Also, this is a limited view of the operating system alone... what about
third
party software that goes EOS - for instance, some of our CA products
will "sunset" in the September and December time frames, so if I felt it
were
important to keep them supported, then don't I run the risk of: 1) not
getting
an IBM fix for some new "discovery" with new CA software; 2) not actually
being supported by CA because my operating system is unsupported??
Any answers and suggestions of sound rationale for this "risk assessment"
is
much appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Peggy
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