Tape Assist and Migration in Place Available Through EMC

21st Century Software, Inc. announces that EMC Corporation offers its Tape Assist and Migration in Place (MIP) software in support of customers installing, upgrading, or migrating tape data from any tape source to EMC Disk Library for mainframe.

Seamless Migrations
"21st Century Software and EMC work together to provide customers a streamlined, efficient migration experience. With two options to choose from, customers have a reliable solution for their needs while recognizing their operational resiliency and data availability are not compromised," said Rebecca M. Levesque, CEO, 21st Century Software.

EMC and 21st Century products have already been implemented in multiple customer migrations. Tape/Assist and MIP are mainframe tape copy, migration and consolidation utilities used to reduce the cost of managing tape resources while providing continuous availability to mainframe tape data. MIP is a new approach to tape migration that simplifies the process of upgrading an organization’s tape library to EMC Disk Library for mainframe environments.

Al Brandt, VP, EMC engineering, said: "EMC is pleased to offer the Tape Assist and Migration in Place tools as part of an EMC Global Services engagement. EMC and 21st Century Software have completed numerous successful migrations to EMC Disk Library for mainframes to deliver data protection and business continuance, while improving customers’ overall business resiliency, and ensuring we have the best tools and highest level of support possible."

Migrations appear seamless to the customer, as the migration activity can proceed during normal production tape processing. MIP retains same VOLSERs, all volumes are treated the same way, and MIP is not TMC dependent. MIP was designed to meet EMC Disk Library for mainframe migration requirements. Tape Assist changes device geometries, transfers referential integrity and can be used to assist if a customer requires portability for recovery, tertiary, or any other reason.