Data Archiving

The SAP application generates a significant amount of data, and this increases with every new release.  The growth of the SAP database is generally reflected by a reduction of system perfomance, but in addition there are additional strains placed up the system management people and processes.  A not uncommon scenario is for a production SAP database to be copied to create testing and training systems, so a 100GB increase in production data can easily lead to 400Gb or 500Gb of additional landscape storage when DR and backup servers are taken into account.

Currently only about 30% of the current SAP customers worldwide keep their database growth under control by archiving data and in turn keep their SAP systems in peak performance.  Many of the remaining 70% have no idea how big their database is and its growth rate.  The first time they may look at it is when batch or interactive performance deteriorates or their database management system such as Oracle warns them of low remaining free space in their disk storage systems.  Even for those customers that do archive, a number of these do not look at the additional archiving that could be performed to reduce the size of their disk storage.

Deleting data is not a viable option, since there an any number of legal and regulatory requirements on the retention of data, however, data from closed business process can be archived to a "content repository" server, freeing up space in the SAP database but still providing seamless access via SAPGUI to the archived data.  Holding the data in a content repository allows the useage of more appropriate storage media and avoids data replication accross the landscape.

Proceed have available a number of free examples of the tools and process we use during a typical data archiving project. They can be viewed in our Library

Data Cleansing

Archiving isn't only used for data that you want to keep.  By implementing a targeted strategy of Basis "Archiving Objects" we can cleanse your system of unwanted logs, IDOCs & change documents.  Additionally, we can help identify duplicates in your master data, leading to less errors when selecting incorrect or out-of-date records. 

SAP ILM

SAP ILM (Information Lifecycle Management) is the new end-to-end data management process from SAP.  It is built upon 3 main towers:

* Data Archiving & Management
* Retention Management
* Retention Warehouse

With ILM, SAP fills a much needed functionality gap in its ability to handle the complex data management and retention requirements of modern regulators in countries around the world.