Avaali offers consulting, implementation and support services for Enterprise Information Management (EIM) to help organizations realize the full value of their digital assets including their structured and unstructured content.

1. Put Together A Data Archiving Strategy And Execute It
Before Embarking On Sap Upgrade
Description
A significant amount is invested by organizations in a SAP upgrade project. However few really know
that data archiving before embarking on SAP upgrade yields significant benefits not only from a cost
standpoint but also due to reduction in complexity during an upgrade. This article not only describes
why this is a best practice but also details what benefits accrue to organizations as a result of data
archiving before SAP upgrade. Avaali is a specialist in the area of Enterprise Information
Management. Our consultants come with significant global experience implementing projects for
the worlds largest corporations.
Archivingbefore Upgrade
It is recommended to undertake archiving before upgrading your SAP system in order to reduce the
volume of transaction data that is migrated to the new system. This results in shorter upgrade
projects and therefore less upgrade effort and costs. More importantly production downtime and
the risks associated with the upgrade will be significantly reduced. Storage costis another important
consideration: database size typically increases by 5% to 10% with each new SAP software release –
and by as much as 30% if a Unicode conversion is required. Archiving reduces the overall database
size, so typically no additional storage costs are incurred when upgrading.
It is also important to ensure that data in the SAP system is cleaned before your embark on an
upgrade. Most organizations tend toaccumulate messy and unwanted data such as old material
codes, technical data and subsequent posting data. Cleaning your data beforehand smoothens the
upgrade process, ensure you only have what you need in the new version and helps reduce project
duration. Consider archiving or even purging if needed to achieve this. Make full use of the upgrade
and enjoy a new, more powerful and leaner system with enhanced functionality that can take your
business to the next level.
Archiving also yields Long-term Cost Savings
By implementing SAP Data Archiving before your upgrade project you will also put in place a long
term Archiving Strategy and Policy that will help you generate on-going cost savings for your
organization. In addition to moving data from the production SAP database to less costly storage
devices, archived data is also compressed by a factor of five relative to the space it would take up in
the production database. Compression dramatically reduces space consumption on the archive
storage media and based on average customer experience, can reduce hardware requirements by as
much as 80% or 90%. In addition, backup time, administration time and associated costs are cut in
half. Storing data on less costly long-term storage media reduces total cost of ownership while
providing users with full, transparent access to archived information.