In an age where technology gives companies access to an increasingly large amount of data, it is easy to lose sight of how to best leverage that information. That's why it is imperative to have an information lifecycle management (ILM) strategy. This article takes a close look at how SAP's ILM solution suite provides functionality that allows users to successfully manage data in a variety of circumstances.
With the influx of data and documents that companies deal with every day, it’s clear that a comprehensive information lifecycle management (ILM) strategy is a necessity. But where should you begin?
An ILM strategy must account for many factors, including managing data from a live system environment as well as legacy systems, and covering both structured and unstructured data. And, of course, companies need to manage the entire life cycle of all this information, from creation to final destruction, and ensure that the process is compliant with legal retention requirements.
SAP’s ILM solution suite (see sidebar on the next page) enables you to build a holistic ILM strategy. It provides functionality that allows users to define the period of time data should be retained in live systems, successfully manages data from decommissioned SAP and non-SAP legacy systems, and ensures access to archived data until it is destroyed.
To demonstrate how to make these solutions part of your company’s ILM strategy and ensure the comprehensive coverage of your business information, let’s take a closer look at some important information management considerations.
Managing the Information Life Cycle in Your Live System
Information created within an SAP application lives in the database as long as it is required by the application (or by the law), at which point, when there is no reason to retain it, it is archived and eventually destroyed. Holding information beyond its retention period not only has no value, it can have a negative impact on system availability, performance, and resource use. Moreover, certain laws actually require information to be destroyed after its legal retention period is up.
Based on tried-and-true SAP data archiving technology — which is in turn based on the Archive Development Kit (ADK) — the SAP NetWeaver Information Lifecycle Management solution enables you to define rules to manage the retention of your data, so that you can reduce database size and keep it manageable in the future, as well as retain various business records for different periods of time to comply with legal requirements. In addition, you can preserve records related to a current legal case by collecting and putting the records on hold during the course of the legal action.