SAP ILM

Information Lifecycle Management for SAP

Regulatory rules and business information requirements are the driving factors for an enterprise's Information Lifecycle Management (ILM). SAP ILM offers the rules framework to satisfy these requirements, while SAP certified archiving solutions and the right storage sub-layers provide data security and management for the needed retention periods. SolutionXchg supports you with the necessary products and desired consulting expertise to guide you through your ILM implementation project and helps you making the right decisions along the way.

Effectively manage long-term Document and Data Retention embedded in a complete Lifecycle Strategy and based on a compliant Storage Approach

Supporting all Enterprise ILM Requirements

The management and retention of information has become so important that traditional data management approaches are no longer sufficient. SAP's ILM is the solution for SAP customers who have been data archiving and imaging for years and are now faced with the task of destroying the records that have reached their retention time. In addition ILM offers a solution for system decommissioning.

Many mergers and acquisitions leave a vast number of SAP systems that need to be kept up and running without generating new transactional data but with SAP ILM, SAP customers can discontinue the upkeep of such systems and save on unnecessary expenses. Information Lifecycle Management is not a one-time exercise but an ongoing process to maximize the use of information in your organization while reducing unwanted legal exposure and extraction costs caused by data that is legally expired and where retention is no longer necessary.

The Need for a Different Kind of Storage

All the ILM key features rely on storing data in a compliant storage location but they require additional capabilities in regards to managing the retention of these records. Therefore ILM communicates with the storage layer using the BC-ILM3.0 interface instead of ArchiveLink. Through this interface SAP passes the specific retention settings per stored file on to the archive allowing the archive system then to control the time when a physical delete of a file is permitted. E.g. if a legal hold is placed on a certain object, that object is protected from destruction until the legal hold is lifted. This is also true for data from decommissioned systems. The KGS ContentServer4Storage was among the first SAP archive systems to be certified for BC-ILM2.0 and also is certified for BC-ILM3.0 . It can accept and interpret ILM properties (such as the expiration date or destruction command) that it receives on the stored data in its hierarchy from the SAP system allowing it to then enforce those properties.

Its function is complemented by software or hardware CAS functionality which turns regular magnetic disk storage into compliant archiving solutions. KGS ContentServer4Storage intelligently bridges the gap between SAP business logic and its retention requirements, conveyed by SAP ILM, and the physically stored data objects in the secured storage location, protected against tampering but released for deletion when required and triggered by SAP ILM data deletion functionality. The combination of SAP ILM, KGS ContentServer4Storage, and a CAS storage device constitutes a complete ILM solution.