Information lifecycle management set to ease SAP data problems
1 min read
More than half (55%) the companies using SAP software are ready to adopt ILM within three years, to cut storage costs, improve performance and decommission their legacy systems, according to a survey from Macro 4.
Lynda Kershaw, marketing manager at the software and services firm, says that, of the users surveyed, 100% highlighted storage cost reduction as a key driver for adopting information lifecycle management.
Nearly as many (91%) said a major reason for investing in ILM is its ability to help control the size of the SAP database and to improve system performance, while 59% pointed to the fact that ILM could reduce costs by supporting consolidation of legacy SAP systems.
Kershaw points out that SAP NetWeaver ILM supports such a drive, providing tools and technologies to meet businesses' needs for information retention, destruction and compliance.
However, she adds that Macro 4's 4 ILMLink software integrates with NetWeaver ILM to facilitate control and ensure that such processes are policy based and minimum cost.
"In line with ILM principles, older data and documents that are not needed day-to-day are removed from the live SAP database, compressed and transferred to an online archive that utilizes much lower cost disk storage," explains Kershaw.
"Users can continue to access the information quickly and it is held in a secure and compliant format, in line with retention policies specified by the SAP customer," she continues.
And she adds: "By taking older data out of the live system, you also reduce the volume of data that needs to be processed by the SAP database, to optimise performance" – the result being faster response times, batch runs and restores from backup.
For Kershaw, this is about dealing with the fact that over the years, many manufacturers have moved to integrated, enterprise-wide SAP applications but have then found they are still spending considerable time and effort on maintaining older divisional or regional systems, because they need access to the historical data.
"SAP NetWeaver Information Lifecycle management makes it possible to decommission these older systems. It keeps the legacy data accessible, while the underlying legacy applications can be shut down, in order to free up resources," she explains.
