Shrink the move, retire what you leave behind with SAP data archiving
How data archiving and application decommissioning lower SAP S/4HANA migration risk keeping your information ready for AI.
Every terabyte you carry into SAP S/4HANA® software adds migration costs, testing time, and data you will manage for years.
One global automotive leader was carrying 30 terabytes into its RISE with SAP® move. It archived 16 of them, more than half, removing the budget barrier that had stalled its cloud transition.
Start your S/4HANA migration by deciding what to leave behind. In the first post in this series, we asked which data to bring along and which legacy applications to retire. This post answers both, with SAP data archiving and application decommissioning.
How does SAP data archiving reduce migration risk?
SAP data archiving separates the information you actively use from what you only need to retain. Active data moves to SAP S/4HANA. Inactive data goes to a governed archive, where it stays searchable and connected to its business context.
Your SAP S/4HANA migration stays focused on current data, while historical information remains available for audits, for lookups, and decisions. OpenText™ Core Archive for SAP® Solutions supports this approach, building on more than 30 years of OpenText collaboration with SAP.
How does application decommissioning end the shadow landscape?
Archiving covers the data. Legacy applications are the other half. Applications running only for lookups continue to add cost, complexity, and governance exposure after go-live. Application decommissioning ends that. Without it, the legacy landscape continues running behind the new one.
Four steps make the difference:
- Audit before you migrate. Identify which applications must stay operational, which serve only lookups, and which can go.
- Retain with intent. Work with business, legal, and governance owners to determine what to retain, then set retention and deletion rules before decommissioning.
- Archive with context. Move what you keep to the governed archive with its business context intact.
- Decommission for good. Retire the application once the information that matters is safe.
Treat all four as ERP modernization planning, not post-go-live cleanup. For organizations moving with RISE with SAP, that means these decisions belong in the migration plan.
A phased ERP migration can reduce disruption without losing sight of your deadline. Among organizations running SAP, 78% cite minimal disruption to operations during the move as a key requirement, according to SAPinsider. Start with a high-value function such as finance or procurement, and pilot in one region or business unit before you scale. Archiving at each stage reduces the data carried into the next phase and helps keep the migration on schedule.
How does what you archive shape what AI can use?
AI is moving into SAP landscapes quickly. Two-thirds of organizations running SAP (66%) say generative AI capabilities for core business systems are a requirement of their migration and transformation according to SAPinsider. What AI can use depends partly on the information your ERP migration preserves.
Export a legacy system to cheap storage, and the records may survive while their context does not. Leave it running, and you carry an ungoverned shadow landscape. Archive it with its context, and it stays information you can trust and search, which is what AI needs to draw on later.
Gartner® puts the same idea in terms of investment. “Organizations that report successful AI initiatives invest up to four times more (as a percentage of revenue) in foundational areas, such as data quality, governance, AI-ready people and change management, compared to those that experience poor outcomes from AI.” In an SAP landscape, what you archive and retire is part of the data quality and governance work.
As you decide what to retain, involve your governance lead so information remains trusted, in context, and appropriately controlled for future AI use.
A smaller, cleaner SAP S/4HANA migration is within your control. The best practices guide, Cloud ERP modernization with confidence, sets out actions for CIOs, enterprise architects, and governance leaders. In the third post in this series, we look at what SAP leaders say about the road to SAP S/4HANA.
