Archiving Project - Objectives of Workshops with Business and Development

The workshops help in identifying the process flows for each business object in scope. A business object may be sales order header table VBAK. This includes understanding if there are any customized transactions or tables in use.
Analyzing the capability of the standard SAP archiving objects to include the customizations.
Agreeing the residence and retention periods for the objects from the business, technical and audit point of view.


These workshops should generally be conducted as per the process areas.

Highlevel steps in an Archiving Project

Step 1: Do a health check of the SAP system. The transaction is DB02. Analyze the top size tables and fastest growing tables. Select what tables to be in scope for the project.

Step 2: Do table analysis on the selected tables to understand the different scenarios within the same table. The transaction is TAANA. 

Step 3: Find the Archiving object for the selected table. The transaction is DB15. 

Step 4: Customize the Technical settings and the application specific settings for the Archiving object in transaction SARA.

Step 5: Run the ‘Write’,’Delete’ or ‘Store’ programs of the Archiving Object as required in the same SARA transaction.

IBM’s Information Lifecycle Governance Model

IBM’s ILG Model is based on the concept that different capabilities are required to manage different Information and at different stages of its life.

As a basic requirement, this model recommends a platform that can support different types of Information, i.e., both structured and unstructured data. On top of this platform, the model has got 5 capabilities that can act cohesively or modularly to manage Information over its lifecycle.

The 5 capabilities are:

Content Assessment: This is an analytical tool to distinguish between necessary and unnecessary Information.

Collection & Archiving: To collect and archive information that was analysed in content assessment. This tool particularly used for Information in unsecured systems like emails.

Advanced classification: Determines the context of the Information and categorizes them.

Records Management: This is the core module for Information lifecycle management. This tool helps in the retaining and disposing of information.

eDiscovery: This consists of tools that can respond to ediscovery in order to reduce cost of ediscovery.

References:

http://www.kmworld.com/Webinars/299-Records-Management---The-Foundation-of-Information-Lifecycle-Governance.htm

http://www.informationmanagementrequest.com/campaigns/compliance_warehouse/site/nopaperweight.html

The Three Pillars of Information Lifecycle Governance

Information

Information is all changes that happen in an Organisation. Any data which has got value is considered as Information. But the essential point of this Information is that its value may change over time.

The ever growing Information is overwhelming businesses. This means there is a risk increasing Information breaching and consequently more laws and regulations to manage this. Organisations have to start focussing on the long term strategy of its Information.

Lifecycle

Information created at some point needs to be managed over a course of time to be in compliance with the governing regulations.

Different content established at different time dictate whether it’s a record or not. These records generally are evidence to the activities of the organisation.

If content is established as a record, the long term strategy to manage this record is needed.

Governance

Governance is the controlling of the records over the course of its lifecycle. Information governance relates to the business process, technology and people.

References:

http://www.kmworld.com/Webinars/299-Records-Management---The-Foundation-of-Information-Lifecycle-Governance.htm

http://www.informationmanagementrequest.com/campaigns/compliance_warehouse/site/nopaperweight.html

SAP Carbon Tracker

As I was looking through the Iphone's App store to see if there are any SAP related apps, I cam across the SAP Carbon Tracker.

And I decided to give it a try. First, there is a usual video, SAP walk the talk tour video on the social responsibilities that SAP share and practice and all the statistics related to that.

But the tool itself has got some useful functionality and can help smaller-medium organisations to rethink on their Carbon emissions. The app has the capability to calculate the approximate Carbon emmisions by Electricity Usage, Travel and Wastage in an organisation. There are some variables that needs to be filled like type of vehicle, electricity used etc. Further to providing the approximate carbon emissions, the app actually provides with alternate methods that companies and individuals can try to reduce it. Loads of resources like demos, videos etc are linked to the app. SMEs with tighter budgets towards Environmental causes should definitely try this free application.

What is Open hub Destination?

SAP BW is capable of integrating, processing and reporting on data from different source systems. But there are many instances where SAP BW data are required in other systems. In such instances SAP BW acts as a hub by integrating data from different source systems and supplying data to various other destination systems.

SAP BW has been supplied with an Open Hub Destination(OHD) Service which helps define the hub settings. The soruce objects for this Open Hub Destination service are the InfoObjects(Master Data), Infocubes and Data Store Objects. The destination systems can be flat files, database tables or other 3rd part tools.