Many organizations want the benefits of effective information management but struggle with applying specific policies and processes to their storage systems. Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) from SAP enables organizations to implement their information management vision across applications, databases, operating systems, and hardware platforms. The ILM platform uses five distinct stages to manage the data and information lifecycle.
Backbone of SAP Information Lifecycle Management (ILM)
Many organizations want the benefits of effective information management but struggle with applying specific policies and processes to their storage systems. Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) from SAP enables organizations to implement their information management vision across applications, databases, operating systems, and hardware platforms. The ILM platform uses five distinct stages to manage the data and information lifecycle. The stages include create, modify, close, archive, and destroy. These stages reflect many organizations’ data lifecycles and associated information management requirements. Information Management policies such as residence time, retention time, blocking, and deletion are essential to direct ILM’s principle. It is important to note that an effective ILM solution’s backbone is data archiving to an ILM-certified storage system. Managing live and archived data through the ILM process is essential for timely data flow, compliance readiness, and process success.
ILM Policies & Rules
Data access requirements, along with external compliance directives such as GDPR, are factors that influence your ILM’s policies. Proper policies form a comprehensive approach for managing the life of data from creation to retention and through to its final destruction.
- Residence policies determine the period a set of data must reside in the database until its end-of-purpose.
- Retention policies determine the timeframe an organization must retain a collection of data for industry and regulatory compliance.
- Destruction policies determine when and how an organization must destroy data at the end of its retention period.
These policies can convert into residence, retention, and destruction rules that ILM products enforce through automation. These rules implement these policies by defining audit areas, facilitating data flow from the database to the ILM-certified storage system, granting data access through blocking and retention controls, and timely initiation of data deletion.
Compliance & General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
Along with the increasing industry regulations that organizations must adhere to, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that became effective on May 25, 2018, drives more complex and enforceable information management policies. These factors highlight the need for ILM processes and compliant solutions to address the growing compliance and audit complexities around information management. GDPR Compliant solutions like SAP Information Lifecycle Management (SAP ILM) support Retention Management requirements while helping companies become GDPR ready.
ILM-Certified Storage System
SAP ILM enhances the SAP standard delivery, providing the ability to manage the lifecycle of live and archived data based on good ILM policies and flexible rules. As mentioned earlier in this article, data archiving is the backbone of an effective ILM process. The SRS (Storage Retention Service) is an SAP Service that helps SAP ILM Enabled AS-ABAP system to communicate with ILM Certified WebDAV Storage providers such as OpenText. OpenText Enterprise Library Services (ELS) enforces retentions, legal holds, and executes timely data destruction at the direction of ILM rules through secure and legally compliant data retention processes and technology. SAP ILM and ELS provide end-to-end coverage throughout the complete lifecycle enabling Retention Management and ILM Enhanced Data Archiving.
Process Benefits
A strategic and compliance-focused ILM process that incorporates SAP ILM and ELS as a reliable data archiving backbone provides value in the following ways.
- Reduced IT cost through the more generous support of ILM policies and rules
- Improved System Performance due to a reduction in data volume
- Higher System Availability & Reduced Complexity
- Improved Data Privacy & Destruction
- Information preservation and destruction to ensure end-to-end lifecycle coverage
- Legal and GDPR compliance
- eDiscovery and Litigation Readiness
How can Alitek support your success?
Alitek will partner with you in redefining how you meet your ILM and EIM objectives by delivering a comprehensive strategy for implementing your retention management and data archiving solutions.
About Alitek
Alitek is a leader in information based digital transformations. We help organizations improve business outcomes, increase efficiency, and reduce risk, through better management of information. Our experienced team works with you to build a unique strategic plan based on your specific needs, no matter the size of your company.
