Yes, I was going to suggest the service bureau contract-style approach as well, possibly/probably with a line item to migrate and consolidate the tape contents to latest media (e.g. TS1130) in duplicate or triplicate (and duplicate or triplicate sites), and probably encrypt the data as well (with well-protected keys, with the proviso that losing the keys means losing the data). That'll preserve and protect the data for the longest period going forward.
Another idea: keep the mainframe in-house but put it "on ice" unless and until needed to read some data. This is basically (or actually) free unless and until the company needs some data, then there's a price. Slight modification to that: trade-in the residual value of the machine for a System z10 BC Model A01, perhaps/probably also with a TS1130 drive or two, perhaps at zero net cost depending on what you've got to surrender. Put the BC on cold standby. Keep a set of (encrypted) tapes, and send one (or a couple) sets off-site. That would give your company the longest technical runway to preserve reasonably convenient future data access. ....Dumb question, but didn't anybody think of this problem before, say, December 31, 2008? It's a rather important issue -- corporate data archiving, retention, protection, and access -- don't you think? - - - - - Timothy Sipples IBM Consulting Enterprise Software Architect Based in Tokyo, Serving IBM Japan / Asia-Pacific E-Mail: [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
