Data Strategies International, a provider of data migration services, says it has teamed up with Micro Focus, a provider of application modernization tools, to better enable moving data from mainframe-based physical tape libraries to cloud-based environments.

Micro Focus' Enterprise Cloud Services (ECS) platform now enables customers using migration solutions from Data Strategies International to manage data for compliance, risk management and records management on a lower-cost cloud platform.

This offering targets data coming off of CICS, IMS, and JCL on midrange platforms, Mike Ballantyne, technology adviser at Data Strategies, tells 5 Minute Briefing. While Micro Focus tools are very effective at moving mainframe applications written in COBOL to a midrange or cloud platform, the data remained in a disk-based environment. What Data Strategies brings to the table is the "ability to migrate a tape library as virtual tapes to the new platform. The migrated virtual tapes can reside on a local file system or on the Amazon Cloud."

Data Strategies has written file handlers for the Micro Focus products that enable migrated mainframe applications to transparently access the virtual tapes as before. The combination of Micro Focus ECS and Data Strategies' Data Migration Service for Mainframe Migration (DMSFMM) product enables this mainframe-to-cloud migration. Moving to a cloud-based platform enables Data Strategies' customers to eliminate costs associated with traditional mainframes, while also saving on a variety of other fees connected with conventional tape storage infrastructure.

Compliance drives many of the requirements for such functionality. While most companies have a wealth of metadata that does not need to be accessed on a regular basis, Data Strategies reports that customers must archive this inactive data for regulatory and compliance reasons. DMSFMM with Micro Focus ECS enables Data Strategies' customers to port both active and inactive data to the cloud, the vendor says. Ballantyne adds that DMSFMM can also complement existing virtual tape system deployments.

For additional information please visit the Micro Focus site.

For more details on Data Strategies, go here.