RE: V5R4 Migration (was: Securing tape backup drive)

I agree that if you're on an unsupported OS release it would be
beneficial from a risk management/mitigation standpoint to get to a
supported release.  However, it can be a lot more complicated than
"missing their Saturday morning cartoons", even for a shop like mine
that's on a supported release - V5R3.

We run EnterpriseOne (E1) from JDPeopOracle.  Like any decent-sized ERP
implementation there's been a number of customizations.  To upgrade to
V5R4 we first need the E1 toolset version that is compatible & supported
for V5R4.  To upgrade that we need to upgrade E1 to a newer service
pack.  To upgrade that service pack we need to do a code review against
the two years of ERP customizations to make sure the upgrade won't break
any existing functionality.  Additionally, E1 uses WebSphere App Server
for the UI so we also need to make sure we can either stay with the
current WAS version, which IBM no longer supports but Oracle does, on
the new OS or migrate to a newer version of WAS.  Which would be another
project altogether.

It's not as simple as missing Teen Titans or the inanity that is Veggie
Tales; this is months of effort.  It's effort that has little positive
direct impact on our revenue/service delivery.  Compare that to
continuing development for which we _generate revenue_ from our client
base and you can see where the business would want to deploy the
available resources.

There are reasons for us to move to V5R4, but in the end they are mostly
compelling from the systems side.  They are not very compelling from a
business standpoint.  We will upgrade, but when we upgrade it will take
months and cost thousands or dollars.

As related to securing backups, OS-level encryption support would be a
compelling business reason to upgrade.