Jill,
The we are considering an alternative to MVS (and VM) for two reasons.
One, our company is rather spread out.  We have several "campuses",
only one of which has an MVS processor. In order to reduce intercampus
network traffic and increase backup speeds we are considering ADSM
servers at some of the larger campuses. The other reason for
considering an alternative is two part. We could reduce the amount of
data flowing to our MVS processor if it were diverted to a dedicated
ADSM Server and (part two) we have the occasion to backup large
amounts of data.  We are beginning to consider the Spectra Logic unit
for it's 2.6 Terrabyte capacity per unit. Several of our nodes have
over 100Gig of disk. Currently we limit ADSM to a couple of 3490s,
with Spectra units we could allow ADSM to have, say, 8 or 12 drives.
(Each Spectra 10000s has four drives and 40 tapes) Unfortunately, it
does not appear that the Spectra Units can be ESCON attached to our
CMOS processor, since they are SCSI devices.

While we have had very pleasing results with ADSM on MVS, our
management thinks it's time that we evaluate all the ADSM
possibilities. I suspect we will wind up with a mixture of some type.

Michael.