magnetic tapes and banks

Question

Hi,

Magnetic tapes are still used in banking sector (I think, correct me If I am wrong).

What is the main reason?

Regards

Answer 1

Because they would have to transfer them to other supports, which is a time-consuming task.

As long as they work fine they see no reason to transfer them.

I say this because I spent a month for a stage in an agency that took this same approach and they told me this was the reason.

Answer 2

Many banks are still using mainframe technology, partially because they have huge existing systems (built over decades) that are crucial for daily operations, and partially because mainframes offer certain advantages (huge IO throughput, very high availability).

And many mainframe systems still use tapes as part of their storage hierarchy. I witnessed this myself about a year ago, while accessing a rarely used development system - the terminal showed a "please wait message" and the mainframe guy told me we'd now have to wait a minute or two to have it loaded from tape. The reason for this is probably simply technological inertia.

Also, tapes are still used if you have extremely large amounts of data to store (usually for backups, but also for some scientific purposes) and don't need quick random access, simply because they're cheaper than harddisks.

Answer 3

Well :

• Those companies that use magnetic tapes already have the equipement, and know how to use it
  • Changing would cost time and money ; so why change ?
• Those are working OK, so why change ?
• I'm pretty sure magnetic tapes are cheap

Also, changing would mean :

• A lot of time to evaluate other solutions
• A lot of time to put the new solution in place
• Some possible down-time or lost of backups during the transition ; which is bad
• Risk : if magnetic tapes work OK, a new solution might come with problems... and losing some backups or getting corrupted ones is not great either.

So, why change ? Because of hype ? I don't think that's what banks are after ;-)