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Petrocelli(Petrocelli, 2005) provides a system-
atic, coherent approach to planning and implementing
cost-effective data protection as part of ILM, while,
Smith(Smith, 2009) provides a framework for defin-
ing and assessing the maturity of Enterprise Informa-
tion Management.
Ball(Ball, 2012) provides a comparitive analysis
of various data management lifecycle models and rel-
evance of data archival within each model and Ol-
son(Olson, 2008) provides a detailed step by step
technical procedure for implementing Data Archival
solution.
Khadka(Khadka et al., 2014) provides an insight
into industry perspective on legacy systems, drivers
for modernization and challenges faced in the course
of modernization. However the scope does not
include methods/approaches to overcome the chal-
lenges.
There are some approaches described with respect
to flexible approaches in Information Systems Devel-
opment (Ahituv et al., 1984) that provide foundation
elements for devising newer methodologies using a
combination of various elements.
Practical insights and best practices into Data
Archival are not yet included in the academic / re-
search realm and are confined to the documentation
from product/service vendors.
Thus, there exists a gap in literature with respect to
the project execution methodologies or best practices
to handle risks and challenges not related to technol-
ogy, with specific reference to data archival projects.
3 PROJECT SITUATION AND
SCOPE
A US based fortune 500 automotive components
manufacturer Auto-Sup-Co (name changed to pro-
tect identity) embarked on a large transformation pro-
gram to modernize the applications on their legacy
Mainframe platform to improve their business flexi-
bility, agility and reduce total cost of operations. The
program included replacement of several applications
with equivalent modules of an Enterprise Resource
Planning (ERP) system (Software Engineering Insti-
tute, 2000), while others became obsolete.
For several legacy applications, the moderniza-
tion involved only replacement of the functionality
by equivalent ERP modules, without any data migra-
tion. However, there was a regulatory requirement to
retain the historical legacy application data for a pe-
riod of 7 years from the date of its creation. Hence,
a Data Archival solution (Ref. Appendix) is neces-
sary. While the application migration work was man-
aged by Auto-Sup-Co with support from their current
information systems services partner, they were look-
ing for another information systems services vendor
experienced in carrying out the Data Archival project
of their transformation program.
Data archival implementation is relevant in the
following scenarios across any business enterprise:
• Data Archival for live applications
– Retain information for an extended period of
time for conformance to various legal and reg-
ulatory requirements
– Perform strategic business analysis on histori-
cal business data
– Improve operational costs and application per-
formance by moving off infrequently referred
data to a lesser cost storage medium
• Data Archival for Application Retirement
– When legacy applications are retired some data
may have to be retained for compliance reasons
even if they are not migrated to newer applica-
tions
There are two solution variants for Data Archival
namely Bulk Data Archival (BDA) or Change Data
Capture (CDC) based on project context as explained
below.
• Bulk Data Archival
– When legacy applications retire, there may be a
need for one-time archival.Bulk Data Archival
(BDA) is the right choice for this situation.
• Change Data Capture
– Data archival may be necessary in live applica-
tions at pre-determined intervals to improve ap-
plication performance. CDC is the right choice
for this situation. CDC includes a bulk data
archival in the first pass, followed by periodic
increments.
After a rigorous selection process including eval-
uation of technical and financial proposals, proof of
concept execution results and reference checks, the
largest Indian IT Services vendor, TCS was awarded
the project.
As part of the project’s technical proposal, TCS
recommended a commercial data archival product to
implement the archival solution as a better alternative
over a custom built solution. As a strategic decision,
TCS also recommended Auto-Sup-Co to opt for CDC
solution variant because of the long term benefits that
can be reaped. However Auto-Sup-Co did not see a
business case at that point in time for CDC, consid-
ering its high implementation costs and complexity
DataRe-archivalinITApplicationRetirementScenario-ACaseStudy
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