During and around this year’s iPRES a couple of discussions sprung up around the topic of proper software archiving and it was part of the DP challenges workshop discussions. With services emerging around emulation as e.g. developed in the bwFLA project (see e.g.

Emulation-as-a-Service (EaaS) can simplify the provisioning of emulation for end-users’ needs without requiring them to install and configure complex toolchains on their devices.

The typical digital artefact or complex object does not function (render, execute, …) without a certain software environment. Emulation-as-a-Service (EaaS) provides original environments running in platform emulators. Depending on the (complex) object to be handled, several software components are required to reproduce an original environment.

A couple of preservation workflows (such as full system preservation through imaging) or processing in digital forensics depend on reliable hardware-software stacks f

Remote access to emulation, remote emulation and the emergence of a wide range of different cloud services, and end users interacting with them remotely through standardized (web-)client applications on their various devices offers the chance to combine both into an integrated access system to various obsolete computer environments. In order to provide a wide range of services, especially in combination with authentic performance and user-experience, a distributed system model and architecture is helpful.

System imaging – dumping the permanent storage of a computer system to re-run it in an emulator – is a viable option to preserve complete digital environments. These include complex digital artefacts, famous persons machines, electronic lab books of natural sciences research or software and hardware development environments of software companies, to mention just a few. These artefacts or complex environments – further on “preservation targets” – are typically customized for special purposes and often include highly customised configuration or (unique) user programming. Thus, they often cannot be easily migrated into a preservable format without risking the loss of significant information and/or the context provided by the look and feel and user interaction with the system.