SAP Archiving: A Complete Guide to Archiving, Data Retention and Compliance

Is data an asset or a challenge? Spoiler alert! Honestly, it’s both. Data can make you feel like either a rockstar or a zombie. The difference is how you manage it.

At first, you are excited – “We have got data from every corner of our business, more insights, more trends, more opportunities!” but soon, you are tearing your hair out trying to figure out – “Where do I put all this stuff? How do I keep it safe? Why is my system slower than a Monday morning?”

Let’s not try to sugarcoat it. Data volume is a goldmine. But left unchecked, it is a silent killer of system performance, compliance headaches, and spiralling costs. SAP environments are no exception to this, without a structured approach to SAP data archiving.

Ask about the experience of a leading retail giant that struggled under the weight of unused data. Years of hoarded data were choking their SAP environment.

Slowdown systems! Endless waiting times! Frustrated teams staring at blank screens! But here is the kicker. They didn’t throw their hands up.

Fortunately, they got a solution – Archiving! They turned it around and hit refresh with a smart data archiving solution.

By offloading inactive data, they gave their SAP environment the breathing room.  Supercharging their system’s performance, faster reports, and smoother operations.

With a robust SAP data archiving solution, the retail enterprise not only got an improved system performance but also ensured that essential data remained accessible and audit-ready.

Why Enterprises Have Endless SAP Data Growth?

Think of every employee record, invoice, or purchase order! Data pours in from transactions, payroll, supply chains, customer records, and compliance logs. None of these disappear, but keep stacking.

What can be the result if you multiply the data volume by the number of years of operations? A mountain of information, where only a small fraction is needed for daily operations.

From day-to-day transactions to long-term records, whether payroll, procurement, or reporting, it adds to the growing pool of SAP data.

Resulting in significant data accumulation across five distinct types:

• Master Data (core business entities)
• Transactional Data (daily business operations and processes)
• Configuration or Customizing Data (system setup rules, parameters & workflows)
• Organizational Data (structure & hierarchy of business)
• Metadata (data elements for interpretation & integration)

What Attention Does SAP Data Growth Demand From Enterprises?

Take a closer look at your whole SAP landscape and ask yourself –

• How many gigabytes of your unused data that have not been touched for years are clogging your SAP system?
• How much time does your team waste waiting for SAP reports to run and navigating slow queries?
• How much are you paying for infrastructure and IT operations to maintain unused data that weighs on your bottom line?

Digging into the SAP data landscape often exposes hidden pitfalls. Sluggish system performance. Slow queries disrupt business operations. Compliance risks creep with unclear data handling.

Storing unused data online drives up costs faster than you realize.

Is Every Data Important?

As decision-makers, enterprise leaders often ask themselves, “Do we really need all this data live? Can we manage it better? What about the compliance regulations that demand data retention for required periods?”

Every enterprise that runs SAP systems eventually encounters these questions. The storage bills rise steadily, systems become heavier, and response times slow down.

The final question for business leaders is – “With the voluminous growth of data, how do you balance accessibility with compliance, and still keep your SAP system efficient?”

Thankfully, the answer to these challenges lies in Intelligent Archiving! From all that chaos to control, SAP Archiving leads the way.

What is SAP Archiving? – Not a Mere Storage

Archiving is not about moving old files into storage. Consider archiving as a strategic process rather than thinking of it as a dumping ground.

SAP archiving is much more purposeful. Here, it is about separating rarely used data from the high-frequency data that drives business regularly.

It is the process where you only keep what you need at hand and move the rest into an intelligent, secure archive.

SAP data archiving ensures that the active SAP system remains efficient, aligning with the requirements of reporting, compliance, and audit readiness.

Right SAP Archiving Strategies

What is the smartest approach to SAP Archiving? Every enterprise asks this. Is it a one-off clean-up process, or can it be a disciplined, ongoing practice?

There is no single formula, since the right strategy is based on your SAP system environment, compliance demands, and business needs for automation.

Three core approaches most industries and enterprises lean on –

1. Proactive Archiving

Running archiving at regular cycles, which can be monthly, quarterly, or based on fiscal periods.

This approach helps prevent your SAP system from being overloaded with old, unnecessary data before it becomes a problem – you can keep your system lean, efficient, and predictable.

Infrastructure costs stay in check, and reports run faster.

2. Event-driven Archiving

Archiving is done with purpose, triggered by big events – system upgrades, migrations, or upcoming compliance checks. Here are the natural points that initiate large-scale archiving projects.

Big changes such as migration to S/4HANA, database upgrade, or compliance audit.

The advantage of event-driven archiving is that it clears the decks when the stakes are high. How? For instance, moving to S/4HANA without archiving is like packing every old, broken appliance and gadget into your brand-new apartment.

It just defeats the real purpose of moving into a fresh, modern space. Event-driven archiving enables you to begin a new, upgraded chapter on a clean slate.

3. Business Rule-driven Archiving

Here, archiving is driven by business rules and retention policies, rather than reminders – Intelligent Archiving, where automation makes decisions rather than relying on manual ones.

Data is classified and evaluated against usage patterns, compliance requirements, and lifecycle management.

Inactive historical data are quietly moved into archiving, while active data stays live, ready for daily operations.

Not like reactive clean-up, it is a self-sustaining cleaning system that constantly keeps your business audit-ready, performance-optimized, and cost-efficient.

What is your choice among these three strategies? The winning formula is the strong strategy that often blends all three. Because no single approach works in isolation.

The most successful resilient enterprises create a blended archiving strategy.

Intelligent archiving runs in the background, adding governance and regular periodic reviews. Here, you have the SAP archiving strategy that not only manages today’s data but scales with your tomorrow’s business growth.

Fine! You have selected a strategy that best suits your organization. What’s next is the real question – your plan to execute the SAP archiving process. A successful archiving is possible only when strategy meets execution.

What Are the Best Practices For SAP Archiving?

After deciding the archiving strategy, how do you unfold the SAP archiving process? If you want to execute it successfully, don’t approach archiving as just moving old data out of the way.

But it must be treated as a repeatable, intelligent process that balances cost, performance, and compliance.

Set the ground rules for how to treat data as it is required for your business needs – when to keep the data, when to move it, and how to retrieve it again on demand without chaos.

This understanding is what differentiates a successful archiving strategy from an average one. To achieve this, here are the five best practices that can make your archiving strategy a successful one.

Defining Governance Earlier

Any guess what the primary task of SAP archiving is? Making effective data governance that sets the stage for everything that follows. Archiving becomes an unstructured mess without proper governance.

So, set it earlier – Who owns the process? Who decides retention rules? Who ensures compliance when regulators come knocking? Establishing governance sets clear accountability for archiving decisions.

Aligning Retention Policies with Compliance Regulations

Aligning your SAP data archiving policies with the regulations, such as GDPR, HIPAA, Section 128, and SOX, is like building legal armour around your SAP data system. This is how compliance becomes strong and protects your business against fines, lawsuits, and sleepless nights.

SAP DART Implementation for Section 128 Compliance

This document is about how SAP DART implementation meets Section 128 compliance by archiving financial data in an audit-ready format.

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Bridging Business & IT Teams Collaboration

Why can archiving be an IT-only game? If IT collaborates with the business, a balance is achieved between performance and compliance. You can get the right strategy – both technically sound and operationally practical.

It is the business team that needs to decide on which records are critical, how long certain data must remain, and what access is required.

Testing Data Retrieval Before Archiving

Audit needs the required data that has been archived, but retrieval fails – this scenario no one wants to encounter. To avoid such unlikely situations, it’s always good to test data access before rolling out archiving live.

Run data retrieval simulations. Enabling a smooth retrieval process builds trust. It assures regulators that nothing has been lost during migration.

Automating the Process Wherever Possible

How advantageous is automation? Positioning automation in the required place will shift archiving from merely a project to a seamless, ongoing process.

Manual archiving takes time, effort, and can be accurate only if you are careful. It still leaves you exposed.

Automation, on the other hand, brings accuracy, consistency, and speed to your SAP archiving process.

What Are the Best SAP Archiving Tools & Solutions For Modern Enterprises?

As a modern enterprise, what is your first question when you think about SAP archiving? What data archiving tools are available? How do they fit into your strategy? Here, we have two different sets of tools available for an effective SAP archival strategy.

1. SAP’s inbuilt tools (ADK, SARA, SARE, ILM, SAP CMS, DART) provide the technical foundation for archiving.
2. Non-SAP tools like Archon Data Store (ADS), OpenText, IBM, Hitachi, and SNP extend capabilities and deliver future-ready archiving for the enterprises that need automation, advanced compliance, and multi-system coverage.

Inbuilt SAP Archiving Tools

1. ADK (Archive Development Kit) 

• Backbone of SAP archiving.
• Provides the framework for creating and managing archive files.
• Defines how data objects (like purchase orders or HR records) are compressed, stored, and retrieved.
• Every archiving object in SAP is built on ADK, making it the technical engine that ensures integrity and consistency.

2. SARA (SAP Archive Administration)

• SARA is the command center of SAP archiving.
• Through SARA, administrators perform the entire archiving cycle – creating archive files, writing them, storing them, and later retrieving archived data.
• Manages scheduling of background jobs, monitoring, and exception handling.

3. SARE (SAP Archive Information System)

• While SARA manages archiving, SARE manages access.
• SARE is the retrieval and reporting layer for archived information.
• Critical for compliance and audits – teams can quickly retrieve records while keeping the database lean.

4. ArchiveLink

• Works with SAP Content Management Service (CMS) and external ECM (Enterprise Content Management) systems
• Integrates external storage systems with SAP to link and store documents, images, and archived data objects
• Establishes connections between SAP business objects and archived documents.
• Enables direct access to stored documents from within SAP transactions.

5. SAP CMS (Content Management Service)

• SAP’s core repository service for storing archived content and documents
• Repository management, including retrieval & lifecycle management for archived documents.
• Seamless integration with SAP business processes via ArchiveLink.
• Access control, security, and versioning of stored documents.
• Supports structured (data) and unstructured (documents) archiving.
• Scalable to handle high-volume archiving needs across SAP modules.

6. DART (Data Retention Tool)

• Designed for compliance and tax audit purposes.
• Particularly important for organizations operating in jurisdictions that require detailed audit trails.
• Works alongside data archiving but serves a distinct role focused on audit-ready extracts.

7. ILM (Information Lifecycle Management)

• SAP’s advanced solution that goes beyond archiving.
• Manages retention policies, legal holds, and data destruction.
• Relevant for regulations like GDPR and HIPAA, where organizations must prove not only that data is retained but also that it is deleted at the right time.
• Integrates with both SAP and non-SAP storage systems.

Together, ADK, SARA, SARE, DART, ArchiveLink, SAP CMS, and ILM form the SAP native ecosystem for data and document archiving – data identification, archiving, retrieval, and lifecycle governance.

Non-SAP Tools & Solutions

When you consider SAP archiving, the first step is to understand what tools SAP itself provides, and how these can be extended with non-SAP solutions.

SAP delivers a suite of inbuilt tools that work together to handle the full cycle of archiving. On top of this, you need to integrate third-party or cloud solutions for scalability, automation, and advanced governance.

When you require advanced automation, intelligent decision-making, or legacy system decommissioning for your organization, non-SAP tools such as Archon Data Store (ADS), OpenText, IBM, Hitachi, and SNP extend SAP’s capabilities.

The choice of a non-SAP tool is not about replacing SAP’s native tools – it is about building on them to meet the scale, compliance, and cost pressures of modern enterprises.

Some of the most widely used non-SAP solutions include:

Archon Data Store (ADS)

• Designed for intelligent archiving across SAP and non-SAP environments.
• Automated retention and compliance processes.
• Tamper-proof storage and quick retrieval for audits.
• Especially valuable for enterprises dealing with both SAP and non-SAP legacy environments

OpenText Data Archiving for SAP Solutions

• Certified by SAP and deeply integrated.
• Provides scalable document and data archiving with cloud or on-premise storage.
• Enhances SAP ArchiveLink capabilities.

IBM InfoSphere Optim

• Strong in performance optimization and infrastructure cost reduction.
• Handles both SAP and non-SAP structured/unstructured data.
• Well-suited for enterprises with very large SAP environments.

Hitachi Content Platform (HCP)

• Secure, scalable storage integrated with SAP archiving workflows.
• Focus on compliance-driven industries like financial services and healthcare.

SNP (Schneider-Neureither & Partner)

• Specializes in SAP system transformation, migration, and decommissioning.
• Includes archiving solutions for both SAP and non-SAP legacy systems.

Cloud-integrated solutions (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud)

• Many enterprises use native SAP archiving with connectors to low-cost, scalable cloud storage.
• Ideal for long-term retention with global accessibility.

SAP Archiving For S/4HANA Modernization & Modern ERP

S/4HANA is designed for speed. With in-memory computing, it delivers real-time analytics, faster transactions, and an entirely modern ERP experience.

But here is the question many teams face early in their S/4HANA journey – What happens when years of historical data are pushed into an in-memory system that was built for high-performance live processing?

The answer is simple. Performance drops, memory costs rise, and the entire purpose of S/4HANA becomes diluted. This is why archiving does not disappear with S/4HANA, and it becomes far more important.

Why Archiving Matters Even More in S/4HANA Migration

S/4HANA is not a system where everything remains live forever. It rewards lean databases. Cold data sitting in memory leads to:

• Higher infrastructure and hosting costs
• Slower queries and analytics
• Longer migration timelines
• Unnecessary pressure on the HANA database

So, as a modern enterprise, you may ask a natural follow-up question: How can we keep S/4HANA running at peak performance while ensuring that regulatory and business-driven data is still available whenever required?

The answer lies in intelligent archiving.

Intelligent Archiving In The S/4HANA Era

Intelligent archiving ensures that:

• Frequently accessed, high-value data stays in-memory
• Inactive or aging data is moved to secure, retrievable storage
• Retention policies are automatically applied
• Data remains fully accessible for audits, compliance, or business reference

The process becomes smarter because the system no longer waits for manual decisions. Automated rules decide what moves out and when. Structured workflows ensure that no data is lost, mis-categorized, or misplaced.

Modern ERP Means Automated, Continuous Archiving

A modern ERP landscape demands automation. S/4HANA benefits the most when archiving becomes a continuous background activity rather than a one-time migration job. With automated processes:

• Archiving runs on schedules aligned with business activity
• Data aging and data tiering strategies minimize cold data in-memory
• Systems remain compliant without human oversight
• Enterprises avoid the risks of manual clean-ups

Automation turns archiving into a self-governing process that evolves with business needs.

S/4HANA Data Aging Vs. Data archiving

Many organizations confuse S/4HANA’s data aging feature with true archiving. Both serve a purpose, but they are different.

• Data aging keeps data inside the HANA database but marks it as less frequently accessed.
• Archiving moves data completely out of the database into structured, secure repositories.

This distinction becomes important when planning long-term cost optimization and compliance strategies.

Role Of Archiving In S/4HANA Migration

Migration is often the moment when organizations discover the weight of their historical data. A database that has grown over 10 or 15 years makes S/4HANA migration slower, more expensive, and more complex.

This raises you a key question – Why carry every byte into a new system when only a fraction is actively used?

Pre-migration archiving removes unnecessary load, accelerates cut-over activity, improves testing cycles, and reduces downtime. Post-migration archiving maintains system efficiency, ensuring S/4HANA remains lean and high-performing.

Archiving Shapes The Future-Ready ERP

A modern ERP environment thrives on precision – only the right data, in the right place, at the right time. Intelligent archiving supports this vision by creating clear data boundaries, reducing system weight, and ensuring compliance readiness.

In the long run, archiving becomes a strategic pillar of S/4HANA optimization, not a technical afterthought.

Industry-Specific SAP Archiving

Across different industries, businesses rely on SAP archiving to keep their systems running smoothly, avoid overwhelming their technology, and meet compliance requirements. Also, archiving long-term data helps extract the long-term value of historical data.

Compliance-Driven Archiving Across Industries

Across all sectors, compliance drives archiving initiatives. Regulations demand not just retention but also secure, auditable, and retrievable data.

Intelligent archiving ensures organizations can meet these requirements without manual intervention or system slowdowns.

• GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, Sec 128 compliance – automated retention policies and secure storage.
• Audit readiness – instant retrieval of archived documents and records.
• Tamper-proof repositories prevent data loss or accidental deletion.

SAP archiving is a strategic enabler – with intelligent automation, it helps your enterprises boost system performance, stay compliant, and lower storage & infrastructure costs. Also, the data remains accessible and actionable when needed.

What Are The Hidden Obstacles For SAP Archiving

SAP archiving often looks simple from a distance – moving older data out, improving system performance, and reducing storage cost. But inside an SAP landscape, nothing is ever that linear.

Years of custom code, integrations, audits, and regulatory overlaps turn archiving into one of the most sensitive modernization tasks.

On top of that, rising HANA storage costs, slower batch windows, and extended backup cycles make archiving not just a compliance responsibility but a performance and cost necessity.

And as a modern organization, when you prepare for S/4HANA migrations, the pressure to streamline legacy data grows even stronger.

1. Complex Decommissioning Challenges

Legacy systems rarely operate in isolation. Over the years, they accumulate:

• Tightly coupled custom interfaces
• Point-to-point integrations
• Downstream reporting dependencies
• Middleware or ETL-based data flows
• Hardcoded logic embedded in Z-programs

During decommissioning, these connections become fragile. Extracting data while maintaining schema consistency and business meaning is difficult when:

• Fields have been repurposed over time
• Definitions differ across modules or versions
• Undocumented customizations exist
• Dependencies on external systems (CRM, HR, Payroll, EDI, finance tools) remain active

This complexity increases risk, effort, and the possibility of missing critical datasets.

2. Data Integrity Risks

The biggest fear in any archiving program is simple – Will we still get the data exactly as we need it, years later?

Data integrity is threatened when:

• Inconsistent retention rules exist across modules
• Incorrect object selection leads to partial data extracts
• Parent-child relationships (header → item → history) break during extraction
• Inconsistent time slices create reporting gaps
• Archived datasets fail compliance checks (audit, finance, legal)
• Metadata is not preserved along with transactional data

If validation is weak or governance is poor, the archived data becomes unusable, and the organization risks compliance violations.

3. Process & Cultural Resistance

Archiving creates psychological discomfort. Common reactions include:

• “What if we need the data someday?”
• “We always check historical data for analysis – why restrict access?”
• “Business users should have access to everything.”

Teams that rely heavily on old transactions – Finance, Audit, Supply Chain, HR/Payroll – fear losing visibility or ease of access.

This resistance typically occurs when:

• SAP archiving is seen as IT-driven rather than business-driven
• Users don’t trust the retrieval experience
• The archived system doesn’t provide SAP-like views, reports, or context
• Audit teams aren’t sure if archived data will satisfy long-term statutory demands
• Communication is unclear about why archiving is essential

Without strong change management and role-based access clarity, archiving projects face pushback, delays, or rework.

4. Compliance & Retention Complexity

SAP data spans dozens of regulatory frameworks – GST, VAT, SOX, FDA 21 CFR Part 11, state-specific payroll laws, and country-specific finance acts.

Challenges arise when:

• Retention rules differ by geography
• Conflicting retention requirements apply to the same data type
• Legal holds block archiving timelines
• Audit teams require multi-year accessible datasets
• Data must remain immutable, traceable, and exportable for decades

Any inconsistency leads to compliance failures, audit escalations, or penalties.

5. Tooling Limitations in Standard SAP

SAP’s native tool – Content Server, ArchiveLink, CMS, and DART – were built for compliance, not modern-scale storage, search, analytics, or cross-application reporting.

Common limitations include:

• non-modern UI for retrieval

• lack of advanced search or federated reporting

• dependence on specific versions of SAP

• limited support for large-scale decommissioning

• no self-service access model for non-SAP users

These limitations push companies toward third-party archival solutions that offer better scalability and retrieval experiences.

6. Lack of Project Ownership

Successful SAP archiving needs joint ownership between:

• IT
• Finance
• Audit
• Legal
• Business process owners

But many projects fail because no single group champions it.

Without ownership, decisions get delayed, requirements remain unclear, and validation cycles take months.

7. Underestimating Volume & Complexity

Organizations often misjudge:

• How many years of data exist
• How many tables each object touches
• Number of custom reports or interfaces dependent on old data
• Cost of keeping legacy systems alive until data is moved

This leads to migration timelines slipping from months to multiple years.

How to Overcome These Challenges

Success depends on:

• Clear communication between business, IT, and compliance
• Automated extraction, transformation, and validation to eliminate manual gaps
• A trusted archival solution that preserves context, relationships, and usability
• Strong change management to build confidence in the archived environment
• Defined governance for retention, legal hold, and audit-readiness

When done right, archiving isn’t just a cleanup exercise – it becomes a strategic enabler for modernization, compliance, and cost reduction.

How to Implement SAP Archiving Process

The real question leaders must ask at this point is simple but powerful:

How can I implement a data archiving strategy that balances compliance, efficiency, and business requirements without disrupting daily operations?

Projects that start with this question often deliver long-term value. Because they treat archiving not as a technical task but as a strategic initiative that protects system performance, reduces risk, and prepares the organization for future transformations.

Where should you begin when an SAP archiving initiative feels large, complex, and tightly linked to compliance?

Many enterprise leaders hesitate because the process involves coordination across systems, teams, and governance. However, an SAP archiving project becomes much simpler once it is broken down into clear phases.

1. Assess data volume and growth trends

Every project starts with understanding the current state. Ask the essential questions:

• How rapidly is the SAP database growing?
• Which modules contribute the most to this growth?
• How much of the data is cold, unused, or outdated?

This assessment gives you a factual baseline. It reveals which areas demand immediate attention and which can be addressed later. It also highlights the cost impact of retaining all data online.

2. Define clear objectives

Archiving succeeds only when the purpose is clearly defined.

Are you trying to improve system performance? Reduce infrastructure costs? Prepare for audits? Enable a cloud migration?

The objectives guide the choice of archiving objects, retention rules, and tools. Clear objectives also help business teams understand why archiving is necessary.

3. Identify the right archiving objects

SAP contains hundreds of data objects, but not all become archiving candidates at the same time.

Common objects include:

• Financial documents
• Material movement records
• Sales and distribution documents
• HR and payroll records
• Logistics and supply chain data

This stage requires collaboration between business users, IT teams, and compliance officers. The identification process ensures the right data is archived at the right time without affecting ongoing operations.

4. Design your processes and procedures

This step shapes governance.

A strong archiving process defines:

• Retention timelines for each data object
• Classification rules
• Archiving cycles
• Retrieval procedures
• Access controls
• Audit readiness

This is also where organizations decide whether the system will rely on standard SAP tools or on additional intelligent, automated archiving solutions.

5. Conduct a pilot in a controlled environment

No archiving project should start with an organization-wide rollout.

A small pilot helps validate:

• Whether archiving rules work
• Whether archived data remains accessible
• How business users experience retrieval processes
• Whether there are gaps in compliance or reporting

A successful pilot builds confidence and gives teams valuable insights before scaling.

6. Roll out the archiving organization-wide

Once the pilot is validated, the archiving strategy expands across modules, business units, and geographies.

This phase focuses on:

• Automation of recurring archiving jobs
• Monitoring of performance improvements
• Ensuring all teams follow retrieval and access procedures
• Continuous optimization based on feedback

This is also where most organizations introduce more advanced tools to increase automation, strengthen governance, and streamline archives across SAP and non-SAP systems.

SAP Archiving with Archon

SAP’s native archiving tools or other standard archiving tools do what they’re designed to do: move old objects out of the live application, free up database space, and keep the system running smoothly. For many companies, that’s enough.

But let’s be honest. Large enterprises rarely operate a clean, single-system SAP landscape. They deal with:

• Multiple ECC and S/4HANA instances
• Hybrid landscapes with HR, payroll, CRM, SCM, legacy ERPs
• Regional deployments with different retention laws
• Terabytes of structured and unstructured data
• Audits that require cross-application context

This is where standard SAP archiving starts to bend, and Archon™ stands out as a purpose-built solution for modern enterprises.

It takes SAP archiving to the next level, combining intelligent automation, compliance management, and multi-system support into a single, unified platform.

What Archon Data Store (ADS) Adds to SAP Archiving

Automated Processes for Retention, Cleansing, and Storage

SAP archiving jobs still depend heavily on Basis teams and manual oversight. ADS removes that bottleneck.

• Identifies inactive or retention-expired SAP data without manual checks
• Cleans duplicates and removes junk records before archiving
• Applies regulatory or business retention policies automatically and consistently
• Eliminates repetitive Basis tasks and reduces human error
• Keeps the SAP landscape optimized continuously instead of in periodic cleanup cycles

Intelligent Archiving That Adapts to Business Rules

Here’s something every SAP customer knows: If you lose context, you lose compliance. Standard archiving focuses on objects. ADS focuses on meaning.

• Goes beyond table-level archiving and preserves full business meaning
• Classifies HR, finance, payroll, procurement, and other records based on actual business logic
• Maintains regulatory context for each archived object so compliance isn’t lost
• Adjusts retention and classification rules when business operations or regulations change
• Ensures archived SAP data stays relevant, contextual, and compliant for years

A Compliant, Tamper-Proof Repository for SAP and Beyond

SAP ILM can control retention policies inside SAP. What it cannot provide is an immutable, centralized, cross-application archive. ADS fills that gap:

• Provides encrypted, tamper-proof, immutable storage for all archived SAP data
• Includes full audit trails, legal hold, and defensible deletion workflows
• Meets global standards like GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, and region-specific retention mandates
• Centralizes governance so compliance teams can validate decisions quickly
• Builds security into the architecture instead of relying on external add-ons

This gives compliance officers something they never get from SAP alone: one place to manage retention across the entire enterprise.

Multi-System Support

SAP’s native archiving cannot unify these systems. ADS can. That lets you:

• Works across SAP and non-SAP systems: ERP, CRM, HRMS, payroll, legacy databases
• Consolidates historical data into a single, searchable, audit-ready repository
• Helps retire legacy systems safely without losing access to their data
• Reduces infrastructure cost across the entire application estate
• Enables compliance teams to manage multi-application retention from one place

Future-Ready Scalability and Modernization Support

Most archiving tools solve yesterday’s problem like shrinking an Oracle or HANA database. But ADS is built for tomorrow’s problems, i.e., lifecycle, compliance, and modernization.

• Scales to handle growing SAP workloads and multi-petabyte histories
• Supports cloud, hybrid, or on-prem storage depending on the organization’s strategy
• Automates lifecycle policies so archived data ages and expires correctly
• Keeps historical access intact during S/4HANA migrations or system modernization
• Turns archiving from a technical task into a modernization enabler

These turns archiving into a long-term strategy rather than a one-off project.

Why Archon Matters in an SAP Archiving Strategy

Archiving usually sits in the background of SAP operations like something teams do to keep systems running and audits quiet. Archon flips that dynamic.

It turns archiving into a strategic advantage by giving organizations control, context, and confidence over their historical data instead of simply pushing it out of the live system.

• Reduces the operational load on Basis and IT teams by removing manual oversight and repetitive archiving tasks
• Gives business users fast, searchable access to historical data whenever they need it
• Provides compliance teams with clear, defensible visibility into retention, storage, access, and deletion policies
• Lowers infrastructure cost by consolidating disparate archives into a single, future-proof repository
• Strengthens audit readiness with immutable storage, complete lineage, and consistent policy enforcement
• Shifts SAP archiving from a reactive storage necessity to a proactive source of agility and modernization

Archon turns SAP archiving into an enabler of growth, compliance confidence, and long-term modernization instead of a burden the organization has to carry. Talk to us and know how ADS handles SAP workloads – contact us.