Why You Shouldn’t Free Climb in the Cloud

One thing is for certain: Using cloud solutions makes life easier. They are easy to implement, easy to use, and easy to scale. Whether from the administrator’s or the user’s point of view, cloud computing is a major driver of digital transformation. But as smart as modern cloud applications are, they generate and process important corporate data which must be reliably and securely archived. Although the data generated in the applications are usually stored by cloud providers, from a purely legal point of view, the responsibility for long-term archiving lies with the company.

A balancing act without backup

Companies should therefore not start climbing towards the cloud without putting on a safety rope first. A backup system in this case means implementing a cloud-enabled archiving solution, because thorough archiving is the insurance for data of every company. While traditional insurances pay for the consequences and costs in the event of damage, the protective mechanism of an archiving solution sets in earlier and more broadly. It ensures that damage due to data loss, audit breaches, or other GDPR violations do not occur in the first place. 

This is of central importance from both a security and a legal perspective. After all, companies must ensure that their data is secured. Even if data are automatically stored in the cloud, decision-makers should introduce a backbone to play it safe.

Modern archiving solutions offer attractive options that are neither expensive nor complex. Especially when it comes to intelligent archiving concepts, they ensure lean archiving that is integrated in the corporate IT landscape and adapt towards the leading ERP systems.

Backbone for SAP data

SAP, for example, has a function that allows data that are no longer needed in SAP through online access to be removed from the SAP database via a mass data export. Anyone taking this step must ensure that these data remain analyzable even after archiving. Currently, the data are exported via SAP ArchiveLink and then archived. The technology of the future, however, are Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS). CMIS are also the basis for general archiving of cloud data, the perhaps most famous example being S/4 Hana. Modern archiving must be able to speak several languages and, like Tia from KGS, for example, enable the switch from ArchiveLink to CMIS as just a flick of the wrist without having to switch to a new climbing route.

Preliminary outlook

Optimistically, around 80 percent of companies currently working with SAP will be using S/4 Hana in five years’ time. It can also reasonably be assumed that the vast majority of companies will start relying on cloud solutions in that same time period. This automatically makes the CMIS interface the linchpin for documents and thus for archiving.

Anyone searching for the right grip now should focus on pure archiving solutions. They are a real alternative to volumetric, cost-intensive document management systems that often block the way of the ERP system rather than complementing it. The reason: the gap in the lifecycle of documents and data usually only exists in archiving. In a cloud environment, the sense of security is not determined by the number of different ropes like in a puppet theater, but by the strength and flexibility of the one backup.

PDF in English