Customers using SAP® software are ready to adopt ILM to cut storage costs, improve performance and decommission legacy systems, according to UK survey from Macro 4

Of users surveyed, 100 per cent highlight storage cost reduction as a key driver for Information Lifecycle Management.

Crawley, UK, January 20, 2011 – According to the results of a survey of 177 UK organizations that use SAP® solutions conducted by Macro 4, 55 per cent are considering introducing an Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) strategy within the next three years.

The users questioned in the Macro 4 survey identified a number of key drivers for adopting ILM, including the potential to reduce storage costs, improve system performance and decommission legacy systems.

In the survey, entitled "A Macro 4 Study: Attitudes to ILM from users of SAP solutions", an overwhelming 100 per cent of the SAP software users questioned said reducing escalating storage costs was a key driver for implementing ILM.

Nearly as many - 91 per cent of the survey sample - said a major reason for investing in ILM is its ability to help control the size of the SAP database and to improve system performance, while 59 per cent pointed to the fact that ILM could reduce costs by supporting decommissioning or consolidation of legacy SAP systems.

ILM is recognized as a strategy for helping organizations to cost effectively manage large volumes of data over the long term. This is supported by SAP NetWeaver® Information Lifecycle Management, which provides tools and technologies to meet enterprise needs for information retention, destruction and compliance with legal and regulatory mandates.

Macro 4's 4 ILMLink software integrates with SAP NetWeaver Information Lifecycle Management to permit the controlled archiving and destruction of documents and data in line with organizations' data retention policies while minimizing costs.

"In line with ILM principles, older data and documents that are not needed day to day are removed from the live SAP database, compressed and transferred to an online archive that utilizes much lower cost disk storage," said Lynda Kershaw, Marketing Manager at Macro 4. "Users can continue to access the information quickly and it is held in a secure and compliant format, in line with retention policies specified by the SAP customer.

By taking older data out of the live system you also reduce the volume of data that needs to be processed by the SAP database, to optimize performance. End user response times, batch runs and restores from backup are all faster as a result."

Kershaw further explained why Macro 4's survey respondents identified the ability to decommission or consolidate legacy SAP applications as an important factor for ILM:

"Over the years, many customers have moved to integrated, enterprise-wide SAP applications but find they are still expending considerable time and effort in maintaining older divisional or regional systems because they need access to the historical data. SAP NetWeaver Information Lifecycle management makes it possible to decommission these older systems – it keeps the legacy data accessible, while the underlying legacy applications can be shut down, in order to free up resources.

About the Macro 4 Survey The survey, entitled "A Macro 4 Study: Attitudes to ILM from users of SAP solutions," is based on an e-mail questionnaire completed by 177 organizations using SAP software in the U.K.

About SAP NetWeaver Information Lifecycle Management With SAP NetWeaver Information Lifecycle Management, SAP provides the tools and technologies to support information lifecycle management activities that meet enterprise needs for data retention, data destruction, and compliance with legal and regulatory mandates. The solution delivers the following business benefits:

• Increased productivity – Automates all aspects of handling an organization's data, rather than just automating storage procedures

• Reduced total cost of ownership – Optimizes use of resources and reduces administrative costs while decommissioning legacy installations of SAP and non-SAP solutions

• Compliance with legal requirements and internal service-level agreements – Can implement storage systems that understand and act on data using user-defined rules

• Reduced risk – Users experience greater system availability with faster backup and recovery

• Maintained flexibility – Adapts to the never-ending flow of new regulations and requirements