From Backup File to Analytics Asset: Rethinking What Your DR Infrastructure Is Actually Storing
Project and Program:
Service Delivery,
Data Center Management and Resiliency
Tags:
Proceedings,
2026,
SHARE Pittsburgh 2026
Mainframe backup and recovery infrastructure is designed around one scenario: restore the database if something goes catastrophically wrong. In practice, those backup files — sitting in object storage, accumulating daily — represent something more valuable than a restore point. They are timestamped, authoritative, point-in-time snapshots of your most critical business data. This session explores how organisations can derive analytics value from existing DR infrastructure without changing backup schedules, adding z/OS footprint, or compromising recovery objectives. We will cover the conversion of backup files to open formats for historical analytics, the use of backup snapshots for regulatory point-in-time reporting, the role of backup-derived data in ML training datasets, and the governance requirements for treating backup outputs as analytics inputs. The session includes a frank discussion of where this approach is appropriate and where it introduces risks that should be managed.
Back to Proceedings File Library