Industry: Consumer Apparel, Global
Use Case: Mainframe Retirement, SAP Archiving, Archival Factory
The Situation: A Global Apparel Group Running on Acquisitions and Drowning in the Data Each One Left Behind
For a global apparel business operating across multiple geographies, acquisitions and divestitures aren’t exceptions — they’re the operating model. That creates a data problem most archiving vendors aren’t built to solve: heterogeneous systems, inconsistent formats, and an archive estate that grows faster than anyone can govern it.
The organization had three clear requirements:
- Reduce the SAP HANA database footprint ahead of migration
- Retire multiple mainframe applications
- Build a repeatable Archival Factory — a scalable, governed mechanism for ingesting, classifying, and retaining data from any future acquisition or divestiture without starting from scratch each time
The Challenge: A Failed Vendor, Broken Pipelines, and Four Types of Data Nobody Knew How to Handle
The project inherited a ‘Failure to Launch’ situation. A previous archiving solution had been attempted and abandoned, leaving volumes of partially ingested data, broken ingestion pipelines, and no coherent retention policy framework. The team had to:
- Re-ingest data from failed project objects — data that had been partially extracted but not properly archived
- Design the entire archiving process from scratch with no usable blueprint from the previous vendor
- Handle heterogeneous data across four distinct content categories simultaneously:
- Structured SAP transactional data (FI & CO, MM, SD, PP functional objects; IDOCs, LOGS, WORKITEMS)
- Unstructured content in mainframe formats, including AFP (Advanced Function Presentation) documents
- SAP historical data across multiple ERP instances
- SAP connected secondary systems requiring coordinated archival
The mainframe retirement scope alone involved multiple applications across different technology stacks. AFP is a format most archiving platforms simply cannot ingest as it requires specialist transformation capability before the content can be indexed, searched, or retained in a modern archive.
“The previous vendor left. The data didn’t. We inherited the mess and built the solution that should have been there from day one.”
— Archon Implementation Team
What Archon Did: A Full Archival Programme Built from the Ground Up
Archon rebuilt the project from the ground up with a properly designed archiving programme:
- Full re-ingestion of data with validation and reconciliation against source systems
- SAP Data Archiving across FI & CO, MM, SD, and PP functional modules, plus technical objects (IDOCs, LOGS, WORKITEMS)
- Mainframe application retirement across multiple applications, with AFP format handling and content transformation
- Document and technical archiving to a unified archive store
- Design and implementation of triage tooling: purpose-built utilities for classifying incoming data, predicting storage costs, and assigning retention tiers before ingestion
- Establishment of a long-term day-forward Archival Factory: a repeatable, governed ingestion pipeline that absorbs new systems (including future acquisitions) without bespoke project work each time
The Results
| Outcome | Detail |
|---|---|
| Millions in savings | Quantified cost reductions from legacy license elimination, storage rationalisation, and mainframe decommissioning, with ongoing savings from the Archival Factory model. |
| Mainframe retired | Multiple mainframe applications were successfully retired. AFP content extracted, transformed, and archived with full metadata indexing. |
| SAP footprint reduced | HANA migration readiness is achieved through comprehensive SAP archiving across all major functional and technical object categories. |
| Cost predictability | Triage tooling gives finance and IT a forward view of storage costs and retention obligations before data is ingested, not after. |
| Archival Factory live | Repeatable, policy-driven ingestion pipeline in production. Future acquisitions or divestitures are absorbed into the existing framework. |
Why it Matters
For organizations where M&A is structural and not occasional — archiving can’t be a one-off project. It has to be a capability.
The Archival Factory model means every future acquisition arrives with a governed path to archive, not a new six-month project. The cost of getting that wrong isn’t just one failed implementation. It’s compounding data debt with every deal.
Could your organization recover a failed archiving project across mainframe, SAP, and unstructured content without starting the clock over?
If the answer is uncertain, Book a Data Estate Recovery Assessment with Archon →
