Gartner mentions Infobelt in their latest report "Use AI to Modernize Data Retention and Archiving (August 2026)"
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Bridging the ChaRM Gap: How to Archive SAP Change Management Data Before Moving to Cloud ALM

Organizations preparing for the December 31, 2027 mainstream support deadline for SAP Solution Manager (SolMan) 7.2 face a critical architectural obstacle. While SAP directs enterprises toward SAP Cloud ALM for future application lifecycle management, Cloud ALM operates as a standardized Software-as-a-Service platform. It does not ingest custom ABAP code extensions, multi-terabyte database traces, or historical Change Request Management (ChaRM) records.
Failing to plan for this architectural gap results in a costly dilemma. Teams either leave aging SolMan instances running in expensive read-only server states or perform blind data cuts that risk regulatory compliance failures during SOX or FDA audits. Enterprise architects and Basis leads need a structured method to decouple change management history from operational systems before sunsetting legacy hardware.
The ChaRM Data Retention Challenge
Change Request Management controls transport workflows, approvals, and code changes across enterprise landscapes. Years of operation create vast repositories containing regulatory audit trails, transport logs, and functional sign-offs.
When migrating to SAP Cloud ALM, these historical assets cannot be imported natively. Leaving them trapped in an expiring on-premise SolMan database forces infrastructure teams into maintaining unnecessary virtual machines, cloud storage tiers, and database licenses purely for historical lookup purposes.
Bridging the Gap: Structured and Unstructured Extraction
Effective application retirement requires managing diverse data structures. Solution Manager holds relational database tables alongside unstructured documents like PDF test sign-offs, functional specs, and process blueprints.
Modern archiving frameworks ingest both structured relational records and unstructured files into a single repository. Automated full-text indexing, metadata enrichment, and Write-Once-Read-Many (WORM) immutability protections secure all extracted SolMan artifacts, ensuring document-level discovery during audits.
Querying Archives Without Native System Restoration
Traditional data retrieval requires staging databases or restoring archives back into native application environments, adding technical overhead and infrastructure costs
Advanced data access frameworks eliminate this requirement by using specialized query languages designed for compressed and encrypted storage tiers. Authorized teams query, filter, and extract high-value historical records directly from storage without spinning up databases. Auditors retrieve past transport approvals or change histories instantly while leaving legacy servers permanently powered off.
Conversational Archive Access via Generative AI
Navigating historical records no longer requires writing complex database scripts or understanding proprietary SAP table layouts.
Generative artificial intelligence and natural language processing modernize enterprise archives. Through a conversational interface, compliance officers and IT managers ask plain English questions, such as “Retrieve all approved ChaRM transport requests for Finance releases in Q3 2024”.
Underlying query engines analyze the data model, execute searches securely, and export audit-ready reports in standard formats like CSV or SQL. This capability reduces audit response cycles from weeks to seconds while enforcing fine-grained user entitlements.

Validated by Industry Research

Managing historical data effectively requires modern architectural frameworks. In their report Use AI to Modernize Data Retention and Archiving (August 2026), Gartner highlights that while many organizations retain historical data, far fewer can use it effectively. Gartner advises infrastructure and operations leaders to apply AI to data archiving where poor data access blocks application retirement and trusted use of archived records.
Infobelt is recognized in this report for addressing these exact enterprise data governance challenges.

Action Plan for Enterprise Architects

  • Audit Your Footprint: Identify all custom ChaRM transport tables, integration traces, and functional documents inside your current SolMan instance.
  • Define Retention Rules: Separate transient system monitoring logs from regulatory audit trails that require multi-year preservation.
  • Deploy a Unified Archive: Implement solutions capable of extracting and securing structured and unstructured records before your migration window closes.
  • Enable AI Querying: Utilize modern conversational query tooling to maintain instant, conversational audit readiness without keeping legacy hardware alive.

How Infobelt Can Help

Retiring legacy application lifecycle management tools requires balancing strict audit compliance with infrastructure cost reduction. Infobelt provides specialized enterprise data archiving and application retirement solutions built for complex SAP landscapes.

Through Infobelt Omni Archive Manager (OAM™) and AQL-Copilot™, organizations extract structured ChaRM data and unstructured compliance documents into a secure, vendor-neutral repository. Infobelt’s platforms enable direct archive querying without native database restoration, supported by AI-driven natural language search capabilities that streamline regulatory audit defense and accelerate complete SolMan server decommissioning.