What is a data archiving solution?
The process of data archiving involves moving historical data to a separate storage location for long-term retention. The archived data is usually indexed and includes search capabilities that help organisations locate and retrieve data seamlessly. It is stored in low-cost storage tiers, which helps free up the space of the primary database.
Businesses usually archive inactive data for future reference and compliance purposes. The first step in the process is to develop an effective data archiving strategy. This step helps companies locate and categorise their data suitable for archiving.
A wide range of SAP archiving solutions are available in the market that help businesses effectively archive their data, automate the entire process, and avoid human errors.
Why is data archiving important for organisations?
Here are some of the key reasons that highlight the importance of data archiving for organisations:
Reduced costs
Most archived data are stored on low-performance media, resulting in lower maintenance and costs. Moreover, archiving solutions offer cost-effective pricing models that let you put less pressure on the financial budget.
Less storage capacity required
The process of data archiving includes compression. This means the archived data takes up less storage space than the original data. Furthermore, by moving inactive data, archiving helps in creating more space in the primary database, which is quite expensive.
More data protection
Archiving allows you to remove data that could become a primary target for cyber attackers. Additionally, you can set your archive in a way that prevents data modification and data loss.
Optimised system performance
By moving inactive data out of the live environment, SAP archiving software helps reduce the load on production systems and improve system performance.
Data privacy
Data archiving helps you ensure compliance with data protection laws and audit requirements by retaining or deleting personal information in a tax archive format.
Reduced carbon footprint
Archiving significantly reduces energy consumption by moving the inactive data from the primary system, which helps contribute to the organisation's sustainability goals.
Less migration time
If your organisation plans to migrate to an upgraded ERP system, such as SAP S/4HANA, then data archiving becomes extremely important. Wondering how? Well, such advanced ERP solutions run on in-memory databases that are expensive and difficult to scale. In such cases, you can't take all your data to the newer system. That is why archiving is necessary to move inactive data to a separate location and migrate only the business-relevant data. Moreover, with less data in your primary system, you can migrate to an upgraded system in less time.
Data archiving best practices
Before exploring automated SAP archiving solutions, let's take a look at some of the best practices for effective data archiving:
Develop a detailed data retention policy
A data retention policy helps define how long different types of data should be kept based on business and regulatory requirements. You can begin this process by categorising your data as per its sensitivity, obligations, compliance, and business value. This allows you to identify which data needs archiving on priority, what data should be deleted, and the retention period needed for each category.
Regulations and business priorities often change from time to time, which is why regularly reviewing these categories is essential. You can ask key stakeholders from the legal, IT, compliance, and finance departments to participate in the process, ensuring the policy encompasses all necessary aspects. This collaboration will help create an effective policy that addresses both business and operational needs.
Ensure the accessibility of archived data
Select an SAP archiving solution that offers effective search capabilities, enabling users to locate and retrieve required files or datasets quickly. Metadata tagging can enhance search capabilities by adding relevant information, such as data, file type, and keywords, ensuring that data is easily accessible when needed.
Additionally, you can also apply tiered storage, where archived data with high priority is kept in easily accessible storage, while less important data can stay in cheaper and slower storage. Ensure that the accessibility to archived data is only granted to authorised and limited users to eliminate the chances of data loss and unauthorised access.
Implement an effective deletion process
A robust deletion process involves secularly and strategically deleting the data that is no longer required in compliance with retention policies. You can leverage automated SAP archiving software to manage deletions, ensuring that data is removed only when the retention period has been completed.
Make sure to log all the deletions. This way, you can demonstrate that your data deletion process aligns with compliance standards if audited. Moreover, before initiating the deletion process, ensure that the data is not subject to a legal hold or is not part of an ongoing investigation. Implement a review process that involves key stakeholders before finalising data removal.
Consistently test data retrieval
Schedule periodic retrieval drills to reassess that data can be accessed and that the storage solution performs as expected. This practice helps you identify any potential gaps in the archiving process, allowing you to resolve them before they become operational issues.
Use tests to analyse search functionality, recovery speed, and the accuracy of metadata or tags used for indexing. If you locate any problems, make adjustments to your SAP archiving solutions to improve process performance. Moreover, you can document these test runs and use them to train your staff on the proper data retrieval methods.
Why do organisations need an automated SAP archiving solution?
With technological advancements, businesses are poised to benefit from enhanced, next-generation ERP systems, which can further streamline their operations. However, it's essential to reduce the cost and time of system migration by removing obsolete data. While the latest ERP solutions will surely bring numerous benefits to organisations, having an effective data management strategy is critical to ensure cost savings and accurate compliance.
This is where automated archiving solutions come into play. It helps achieve financial advantages by saving on storage costs, maintenance and license fees. Moreover, opting for automated SAP archiving software ensures the security of your archived data. In fact, it is a highly secure method for managing your long-term data retention requirements to ensure audit compliance. Archived data is safe, as it can't be hacked, and it is automatically retained to meet legal requirements.
Key functionalities to look for in automated archiving solutions
Here's what you can expect from an efficient automated archiving solution:
- An automated solution is designed for mass data archiving, which includes initial, regular, and selected archiving.
- It helps schedule archiving sessions in accordance with the business calendars and IT operations.
- It manages all archiving runs until their completion.
- Allows you to automatically recover and restart the sessions in case of any disruptions.
- With the help of an automated archiving solution, you can manage detailed archiving variants, allowing for fine-grained archiving granularity.
- It maintains accurate traceability logs for users.
Conclusion
As explored in this article, efficient SAP archiving software is not just a nice-to-have but a valuable asset for organisations to control their database growth. Organisations must be very cautious when selecting the solution, as the process of archiving is a complex one and may lead to challenges and disruptions if not executed properly. So, what must be your next step? Reach out to an archiving expert who will not only provide a solution but also bring relevant experience and domain knowledge to maximise the archiving benefits for you.
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