When organizations plan Domino transformations, the initial consideration is often centered on determining “What should be migrated?” However, for true compliance-oriented content retention, it is more beneficial to adopt a comprehensive approach by first evaluating: “What information must be retained, and what remains essential to business operations?” This methodology ensures that retention requirements and critical business functions take precedence over the mere transfer of data.
Why Content Age is the Backbone of Compliant Decisions
Content age analysis reveals which applications are inactive and which remain actively updated and essential. iDNA Applications analyzes document metadata to expose creation/modification history at scale, turning scattered Notes applications into age distributions you can act on.
This matters because most jurisdictions require you to keep certain records for set periods, but not longer than necessary. Under GDPR, the storage limitation principle demands that personal data be retained only as long as necessary for its intended purpose but may be kept longer if a legal obligation applies. So, in many cases you may end up in a situation where you must balance minimum sector retention with “no longer than necessary” privacy rules.
Across industries, those rules are concrete. Financial services record-keeping (e.g. SEC/FINRA) typically mandates retention of books, records, and some communications for five to seven years, with regulators increasing scrutiny of electronic record-keeping across legacy and multi-platform systems. Healthcare documentation under HIPAA must be retained for at least six years (often longer under state law), including policies, authorizations, and other PHI-related records. If your organization operates in the EU, country-specific schedules cover HR, tax, safety, and environmental records — often extending to decades.
Why Age Distribution is Your Strategic Lens for Archiving
Archiving isn’t about dumping old data into cold storage—it’s about making smart, defensible decisions. Content age gives you the clarity to do exactly that:
- Spot the true archive candidates: Applications with mostly older content may or may not be part of daily operations any longer, yet often contain records that must stay accessible for compliance over extended periods. Instead of migrating them (and inflating costs), move them into a compliant archive that preserves integrity and searchability.
- Align with retention obligations: Whether it’s GDPR’s storage limitation principle or industry-specific rules like HIPAA or SEC record-keeping, age data helps you enforce retention policies without guesswork. You know what’s past its active life but remains inside its legal window.
- Reduce risk and complexity: By archiving inactive apps rather than deleting them, you avoid compliance pitfalls and free your modernization team to focus on what matters most: active, business-critical applications.
Designing a Compliant Domino Archive
For true compliance-oriented content retention, how you archive inactive Domino applications determines your organization’s compliance, cost, and audit readiness.
- Retention schedules first: Start with your corporate schedule and map Notes applications to specific periods by jurisdiction and industry (finance, healthcare, manufacturing, HR, …).
- Integrity & preservation: Most regulators have modernized electronic record-keeping rules, but they still expect preservation methods that prevent tampering and enable full reconstruction. The good news? In many cases, Domino already provides these capabilities out of the box, such as robust access controls and audit trails. Rather than migrating away (and incurring high costs), the most efficient approach may often be to keep these applications on Domino, moving them, for example, to an archive server with read-only access for users. This strategy ensures immutability, compliance, and cost-effectiveness while maintaining discoverability for audits and legal holds.
- Accessibility & DSARs: GDPR requires that retained personal data remain accessible for legitimate purposes (e.g. regulatory inquiries, data subject requests) and that you do not keep it longer than necessary. Ensure your archive can search, filter, export, and apply deletion when the legal basis ends.
- Evidence of control: Maintain reports that link content age distributions to retention outcomes (active, archived, disposed) per application. This “show your work” log is invaluable during audits. iDNA Applications provides the content age and usage insights that make such reporting defensible.
Why On-Premises Matters for Data Sovereignty
A compliant archive isn’t just about meeting retention schedules—it’s about ensuring your organization’s Domino data remains under your control through compliance-oriented content retention. By archiving inactive applications and sensitive records within your own HCL Domino environment, you safeguard against the uncertainties of cloud hosting. Recent events have shown that cloud providers can be subject to external government demands, potentially compromising access and sovereignty over your data.
Keeping your archive on premises means you retain the ability to prove compliance, respond to audits, and fulfill regulatory requests—without risking unexpected interference or loss of control. In a world where data governance is under increasing scrutiny, on-premises Domino archiving is your strongest defense for both compliance and business continuity.
Assessing Domino’s Ongoing Business Value
A common misconception during transformation is that Domino is “legacy” and therefore marginal. Content age often proves the opposite: the crucial fact that many applications show recent edits and ongoing active document creation. Paired with usage analytics, you are able to gain a clear indication if Domino remains central to live workflows and may be essential in many business processes.
iDNA Applications combines content age with real usage data for a complete picture of your Domino environment. By analyzing each database’s activity records alongside server logs it quickly delivers actionable insights — so you can distinguish business-critical apps from those ready for archiving without lengthy discovery cycles.
This insight shapes your portfolio strategy:
- Modernize first where content is young and usage is high.
- Stabilize and maintain business critical Domino apps when modernization isn’t cost-effective in the short-term, but activity clearly justifies continued investment.
- Archive confidently where content has aged out of daily use yet must remain discoverable for the remainder of its retention period.
Modernization isn’t a simple binary choice between migrating everything or deleting what’s old. Content Age enables a nuanced, compliant path: archive inactive applications to satisfy retention obligations and keep them discoverable. At the same time, prove with evidence, where Domino remains integral to your business today. If you want a faster way to get that clarity, iDNA Applications unifies Content Age, usage history, and portfolio context so you can make the right call, first time.
Ready to operationalize this model?
See how iDNA Applications helps you identify archiving candidates and surface the Domino apps that still power your business.
