1. All archived data is accessible from SAP.
2. No matter how old the data is, it can only be archived if the corresponding business process has been completed and the agreed residence time has expired.
These definitions provide very powerful arguments for the dialogue with those responsible for information and processes.
When it comes to agreeing on what and how much to archive, users are often reluctant to do so for fear of losing information. As long as we can clearly state and demonstrate the two definitions set out at the beginning, we can achieve a very reasonable scope of any data archiving initiative and thus a change in the culture of SAP users.
In our practice, we work from the outset on these two rules with the objective that the estimated benefits in technical form are realistic and translate into what is expected: significant savings in both infrastructure maintenance as well as a very significant improvement when facing a migration to a HANA database platform.