How to bring your SAP archive storage infrastructure up to date
Why traditional archiving solutions no longer meet today’s requirements.
Growing data volumes and increasing requirements for SAP archiving
For years, SAP systems have been generating steadily growing volumes of data. In addition to structured business data, more and more unstructured content is being created, such as receipts, attachments, or documents from connected DMS and ECM systems. At the same time, requirements for compliance, data security, and long-term availability are increasing. Regulations such as the GDPR, Basel III, or SEC 17a-4 make it clear that SAP archiving is now a core governance topic.
Many organizations are reaching the limits of their existing archiving landscape. While SAP and the connected DMS systems work reliably in day-to-day operations, the actual archive storage is often still based on hardware-bound WORM systems. These are costly, inflexible, and in many cases have already reached the end of their product lifecycle. The result is rising operating costs, complex dependencies on individual vendors, and increasing risks to the long-term availability of archived data.
Why traditional archiving concepts are no longer sufficient
Legacy archiving solutions can only meet today’s requirements to a limited extent. They hinder technological change and lead to avoidable long-term costs.
Typical weaknesses of traditional SAP archiving solutions
High maintenance and operating costs
Low flexibility and limited scalability
Low flexibility and limited scalability
More difficult migrations when technologies change
Software Defined Archiving as a future-proof approach
Software Defined Archiving addresses exactly this point. Archiving intelligence no longer resides in the hardware, but in a software-based archiving layer.
This makes archiving independent of the storage infrastructure and allows it to be flexibly adapted to new requirements.
This approach makes it possible to combine compliance, data security, and cost efficiency, and to strategically evolve SAP archiving.
Modernize SAP archiving with iCAS
With iTernity Compliant Archive Software, or iCAS for short, a Software Defined Archiving solution is available that was developed specifically for SAP environments. iCAS acts as a software layer between SAP applications or ArchiveLink-certified DMS systems and the storage infrastructure.
SAP documents are stored together with their metadata in Content Storage Containers. These are immutable, protected against tampering, and independent of the storage used. This ensures that archived data remains valid and migratable across multiple technology cycles.
What iCAS delivers in SAP environments
WORM-compliant, immutable archiving
Decoupling archive data from storage hardware
Flexible use of on-premises, object, and cloud storage
Future-proof migration without loss of data integrity
Long-term data security and compliance
Especially with long retention periods, permanently ensuring data integrity is crucial. iCAS therefore relies on continuous integrity checks, synchronous replication, and automatic recovery of corrupted data. Optionally, archive data can also be encrypted.
This creates an archive that is not only compliant, but also actively ensures the long-term availability and trustworthiness of the data.
Cost-effective and proven in practice
By eliminating proprietary archive hardware and using industry-standard systems, the total cost of ownership of archiving can be significantly reduced, in many cases by up to fifty percent. At the same time, the archiving environment remains flexible and scalable.
That this approach delivers in practice is demonstrated by numerous references. Companies such as Poggenpohl from the Nobia Group, the aerospace supplier FACC, or Deloitte Netherlands already use iCAS successfully as a central SAP archive.
The requirements for SAP archiving solutions will continue to increase. Data growth, regulatory pressure, and cost pressure make it clear that traditional archiving concepts are not sufficient in the long term. Software Defined Archiving offers a sustainable way to rethink SAP archiving.
With iCAS, organizations modernize their SAP archive storage infrastructure, reduce costs, avoid vendor lock-in, and create a stable foundation for compliance and data security.
Conclusion:
Software Defined Archiving as a solution
Learn even more in our white paper
With our solutions, you achieve flexible, scalable, and compliant data archiving
iCAS Classic
iCAS Classic is a flexible middleware for retention management & WORM data archiving. The software solution can be optimally integrated into existing IT infrastructures. While you focus on your core business, iCAS Classic reliably protects the integrity and availability of your data in the background.
iCAS FS
iCAS FS is a scale-out storage platform for a wide range of use cases related to long-term data storage. The software-based platform is infinitely scalable and stands out with low total costs, ease of use, and high flexibility. Whether as secure backup storage, a tamper-proof archive, secondary storage, or cost-efficient object storage, iCAS FS meets your requirements in the long term.
iCAS Capture
With iCAS Capture, you expand your archiving strategy to include direct capture of data from a wide variety of sources.
The add-on automatically reads out relevant information and integrates it seamlessly into the shares of iCAS FS or iCAS Classic. The data is then available in a tamper-proof manner and can be safely removed from production systems, significantly reducing operational effort, storage requirements, and complexity.
