Open Reel (9-Track) Tape Retirement
Recently eMag announced the end of life for open reel (9-track) tape. eMag which has produced open reel (9-track) tape in its Graham, Texas facility for over 30 years, had determined that the significantly decreased demand for this once dominant magnetic media format mandated an organized end of life announcement and program. To provide an orderly and seamless transition for users of open reel (9-track) tape technology, we have spent over 3 years developing alternative solutions that have proven to be both operationally efficient and cost effective. As with all retiring products, the problems facing us are:
- Increased production costs, and therefore increased market prices
- Decreased availability, and longer lead times
- Technology becoming unreliable, and requiring higher maintenance charges
- Technology migration proving difficult with varying exit strategies
All of these are relevant for 9-track tape media. eMag currently offers answers to 3 common 9-track objectives:
I'd like to retire my 9-track hardware, but clients and vendors are keeping me on the technology. How can I get around this? Data Distribution
Data Distribution is a key service provided by eMag. Many Companies
have already turned to eMag's service center to help them quickly and painlessly get off 9-track tape
technology and still service their clients and vendors often in a better way than previously and
always at a lower cost. Imagine, no 9-track hardware, no resource needed to distribute data, lower
distribution costs, less headache, and a solution that can easily be adopted for the next legacy medias.
I want to learn more about Data Distribution.
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I'd like to retire my 9-track hardware, but need a cheaper solution to keep distributing data to my clients and vendors.
eMag has a solution that enables either you or your client to send or receive
data in whatever tape form you wish. You could retire your 9-track mainframe drives,
and have a desktop PC with our software loaded and a SCSI attached 9-track tape drive, so
whenever a client insisted on receiving the data on a 9-track tape, simply write the data from
the mainframe as normal, but maybe write it to a 3480. Have our solution convert it to a 9-track tape, or
any other tape type for that matter. It even has the capability to change formats so the output tape
could be read on, say and AS/400, or a UNIX system. It can even convert to ASCII format and write it
out as a CD. This solution can be trailed free by downloading from our website. It's called MM/PC.
Alternatively, you could have your clients house this solution at their site, and conduct the
conversions there.
I want to learn more about MM/PC.
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