A System z customer has a new chief information officer who is concerned about continued operations and recovery after a catastrophe. Which IBM solution specifically addresses this business continuity requirement for z/OS environments?

Introduction / Context:
This question covers IBM System z high availability and disaster recovery solutions. Senior management, such as a chief information officer, often focuses on the ability of core systems to continue operating or recover quickly after a major site outage. For z/OS environments, IBM offers specific technologies to address geographically distributed resilience and coordinated failover.

Given Data / Assumptions:

The customer runs critical workloads on System z with z/OS.

A new chief information officer is explicitly worried about catastrophic events and recovery.

The solution must focus on continued operations and disaster recovery, not just security or application hosting.

The question refers to widely known IBM offerings for System z.

Concept / Approach:
Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex, abbreviated as GDPS, is IBM technology designed to provide automated disaster recovery and continuous availability across sites. GDPS coordinates data replication, system automation, and planned or unplanned site failover. Other products listed, such as Tivoli Access Manager and WebSphere Application Server, address security and application hosting rather than end to end z/OS site resiliency.

Step-by-Step Solution:
1. Identify which options are explicitly business continuity solutions for System z. 2. Recognize GDPS as the IBM solution for multi site, high availability and disaster recovery on z/OS. 3. Note that TAM is a security product for authentication and authorization, not a site recovery platform. 4. Generic disaster recovery planning is a practice rather than a branded System z technology. 5. WebSphere Application Server primarily supports application hosting and middleware, not low level sysplex wide disaster recovery.

Verification / Alternative check:
You can verify by reviewing IBM redbooks and product documentation, which describe GDPS as an integrated solution providing automated failover, near continuous availability and rapid recovery of z/OS workloads across dispersed sites.

Why Other Options Are Wrong:
Tivoli Access Manager focuses on access control and does not implement multi site system recovery.
Generic DR is a broad concept but not a specific IBM offering or technology stack for System z automation.
WebSphere Application Server can participate in resilient architectures but does not itself manage sysplex wide replication and failover.

Common Pitfalls:
Learners may confuse general disaster recovery concepts with named IBM products. Another pitfall is assuming that application server clustering alone provides complete site resilience. For System z environments, true disaster recovery and continuous availability typically involve GDPS, disk replication, and sysplex aware automation.

Final Answer:
The solution that addresses continued operations and recovery for z/OS after a catastrophe is GDPS, Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex.