Mainframe Reporting and Saving Data: Why Backups Are Non-Negotiable
I’ve spoken with countless output management customers, and I’m alarmed by a recurring theme: many lack not only a robust backup strategy but also fail to practice their restores. This gap leaves them vulnerable to devastating data loss.
Picture a critical report—sales data for a high-stakes client pitch—vanishing into thin air. Or a system crash obliterating your entire database. Your heart pounds, stomach churns, and panic surges as your business grinds to a halt. Data is your organization’s lifeblood, pumping vital information—financials, compliance records, customer insights—through every department. Without it, your company flatlines, hemorrhaging $1M–$5M per hour in downtime costs. 1 With 80% of data centers facing outages recently, the agony of data loss is real: missed deadlines, shattered trust, and a reputation in tatters.
Your Data Guardians to the Rescue!
Broadcom’s Output Management View and Output Management Deliver protect your critical reports with precision and reliability. OM View securely stores and manages critical reports—think financials or compliance documents, they’re accessible when you need them. OM Deliver automates report distribution, routing them to printers, emails, or archives with precision. Together, they keep your business humming. However, a deleted report or a corrupted database can stop them cold, triggering a heart-stopping crisis with audit failures or stakeholder showdowns.
Example: In August 2016, Delta Airlines suffered a five-hour data center outage, canceling 2,000 flights and costing $150M. The chaos stranded thousands of passengers, disrupted global operations, eroded customer trust, and left employees scrambling to recover—a gut-wrenching reminder of what’s at stake when data fails. 2
Backups Are Your Lifeline
Data backups can act as the superhero, pulling your business back from the brink. They ensure you recover and thrive, no matter the disaster. Here’s why backups are essential:
- Rapid Recovery: Restore lost reports in minutes, keeping teams productive and clients satisfied, and workflows uninterrupted, even when chaos strikes.
- Compliance Protection: Meet SOX and GDPR requirements, shielding your organization from dread of audit penalties and ensuring regulatory confidence.
- Operational Continuity: Turn catastrophes into brief hiccups, minimizing downtime’s ripple effects while preserving your business’s momentum.
But backups alone aren’t enough. You must practice data restore procedures in low-stress settings—like a fire drill with no flames. Regular rehearsals build muscle memory, and practice makes perfect, ensuring that when a real disaster strikes, you’re cool as a cucumber, restoring data with confidence and precision. Without backups and practice, every accidental deletion, hardware failure, or site-wide disaster risks bleeding your organization dry, leaving you exposed to costly disruptions and lost opportunities. A proactive backup strategy, paired with consistent restore drills, is your shield against the unthinkable, ensuring your data—and your business—remains unbreakable.
Secure Your Data Today
Broadcom’s OM View and OM Deliver solutions protect your data effortless with built-in, user-friendly tools to automate the process. Save critical data to disk, tape, or even the cloud, ensuring flexibility and reliability.
Regular backups, offsite storage, and routine restore drills are your armor against catastrophe.
Do not let data loss be your company’s demise. Act now.
Would you like to know more? Book a session via my calendar.
Footnotes:
- Uptime Institute, 2022, Outage Analysis
- DataCenterKnowledge, “Delta Air Lines Data Center Outage Leads to Massive Flight Cancellations,” August 8, 2016.
Ed, a seasoned professional with over 25 years in engineering and product management, leads strategy for Broadcom's output management suite. Previously, Ed held product management roles in Blockchain, Security, and DevOps, and led global agile development teams. He chaired CA Technologies' patent review board for five years and holds two US patents.