Chronos Archiving Solution by CSP GmbH & Co. KG

CSP GmbH & Co. KG offers secure data archiving during ‘application retirement’ with its solution Chronos for data that must still be stored in accordance with legal or internal regulations.

Applications are predominantly shut down because they have been replaced by more modern systems or when they are redundant. The applications are shut down, for example, as a result of ongoing company mergers or due to the increasingly common strategy of replacing old systems such as IBM mainframes. The data from the old systems are then either not always migrated or, due to the high expenditure, often incompletely migrated into the new application.

Therefore, the data must be made available for continued access – even when this data only rarely or possibly never needs to be accessed. The standard Chronos software for database archiving enables this old data to be made available over a very long period of time. The application uses an open storage format, which ensures that the readability of the data is guaranteed. In order to investigate individual cases, the whole data inventory does not need to be activated. The software offers search options and selective access to decommissioned database content via a simple web-based client. In addition, the application logic can also be archived and displayed.

All that is needed is a Chronos installation – even when a large number of applications are to be shut down. The installation and the operation of the central Chronos server requires little expenditure, the relevant licence is made available free of charge. One-off licences are incurred for each project in which an application is shut down, as well as a low yearly charge for service and support. The licences and support for the old database and the retired applications are removed and the company can, therefore, make cost savings.

"Customers who send applications into retirement with Chronos benefit from an extremely quick return on their investment: The retired application and old database licences can be allowed to run out and do not generate any further costs", emphasised Stefan Brandl, Product Manager.

Chronos offers advantages in comparison to the traditional alternative practiced by many companies, where the application is stored and the relevant database is also exported and saved. In principle, the tried-and-tested electronic process is secure and error-free, while a manual archiving process is prone to errors and expensive to implement. Data is often lost or version conflicts develop within the database.

In addition, the complete database does not need to be restored in order to call up individual data when using the CSP application – this saves both time and money. In contrast, the full restoration of these sorts of old databases can, depending on availability and complications, take up to a number of weeks. Furthermore, companies make themselves independent of the relevant database manufacturer by using Chronos because the data is saved in an open format.

In order to be certain that ‘classically’ archived data remains in a readable form, it requires regular testing, for example, when a database version is no longer supported. This is also not necessary when the data is archived using Chronos.