*To Cloud Use Case members,*

 I would like to forward this mail from the TIMBUS FP7 project which is
carrying out a survey (
https://intel.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_1LWzcs15h0TIiAk) to aid research
into the digital preservation of business processes so that they can be
exhumed and re-ran in the future. Virtualisation and cloud are key enablers
for this. The output of TIMBUS will be architectures, models and prototype
tools which will be open source (ie: this is not a commerical research
gathering exercise, and i apologise in advance to anyone who is not
interested in the subject). My intent in circulating this is merely to:

1. introduce the issue of digital preservation to a larger audience. So
much of our data today is "born digital" (if i can be forgiven for
borrowing that phrase). How do we identify the data we need to keep long
term and how can we store it in a way to ensure it is not only accessible,
but is also intelligible in the future.
2. for those with a deeper interest in this topic, i would welcome you to
PM me or indeed to fill out the survey and we would be delighted to hear
from you or discuss the project further.

*thank you for your time,*
*Mike Nolan,*
*TIMBUS FP7 Project.
*
*FORWARDED MAIL:*

·         Does your organisation need to retain critical business processes
or datasets over the long term?

·         Has your Organisation struggled to retrieve and access 5, 10, 15
year old datasets?

·         Does your I.T. infrastructure struggle to meet the requirements
of your organisations record retention policy?

·         As part of your organisation business continuity plans, has your
I.T. organisation struggled to reinstate the complete business systems and
processes to a fully consistent state following a simulated or real
disaster?

If you have answer *YES* to any of these questions - then rest assured, you
are not alone as most organisations face similar challenges keeping pace
with changing technologies, growth in datasets, increasing regulatory /
compliance requirements and reducing I.T. budgets.  These challenges are
being addressed by a European FP7 Research Project called *TIMBUS* and we
would welcome your contribution to participate in and influence the
direction of the research.

*TIMBUS *is a European Commission FP7 three year co-funded project with 12
partners in the consortium. The project is focused on addressing the growing
challenge of long term preservation of business data, processes and
services so that the complete business processes can be retrieved and
replayed in years to come.

Consider any of the following scenarios where an investigation team needs
to recreate the interdependent systems associated with either a design or
manufacturing environment –

·         A suspected failure of an aircraft component (wing, fuselage) has
led to an aircraft crash.

·         A pharmaceutical drug currently on the market is suspected of
causing long term negative conditions.

·         A public {dam, bridge, highway}, or industrial {Nuclear, Energy,
Chemical, hospital facility fails.

·         An organisation needs to prove that it developed intellectual
property following claims of patent infringement litigation (eDiscovery).

·         An organisation wishes to revalidate scientific conclusions maybe
using alternative / improved tools / techniques i.e. searching for
oil/gas/mineral resources deposits / atomic particle data.

·         Following a natural disaster, an organisation needs to restore
its complete business operations as part of it BCP capabilities.

In all these scenarios, being able to rewind the clock, restore the
system(s) and data and replay portions or complete versions of business
process may be critical to enable an organisation to identify the root
cause of a fault, prove or disprove a hypotheses or recover the business
following a disaster. The TIMBUS research agenda is aimed at addressing
these preservation and retrieval and re-execution challenges.

So to assess your needs in this area, we have developed a questionnaire
which is structured to capture basic information about your organization's
activities and its need to preserve data and business processes over the
long term. We wish to understand your organisations high level
requirements, its current digital preservation capabilities and to see if
there are opportunities where a TIMBUS like solution would deliver value to
your organisation.

Once all the data has been collected, we will make the findings available
to you. Please note that your responses will be kept confidential and will
be used for research purposes only. Should you have any questions at any point,
please contact: timbus.sur...@gmail.com

Please proceed to the survey itself.
https://intel.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_1LWzcs15h0TIiAk

With kind regards

TIMBUS Project Team.

Click here to learn more about TIMBUS http://timbusproject.net/