ILM: If it's not a product, what is it?

Storage Networking World - The concept of information life-cycle management has been around for a while, but the storage industry, it seems, is still trying to figure out exactly what ILM is. Consider, for instance, that in a recent survey of 252 users conducted by the SNIA End User Council, 42% said they "neither agreed nor disagreed" with the definition of ILM developed by the SNIA in November 2004.

It sounds so simple: if you collect enough business information, you'll glean valuable insights that can drive both revenue growth and competitive advantage. Managing the explosive growth of online data can prove a formidable challenge.

Certainly the driving forces for ILM¿namely, cost, complexity and compliance¿continue to grow, and user interest in adopting ILM practices is high. That's no surprise, with data growing at a rate of 30% to 50% per year for many organizations, as well as increased government regulations that call for companies to retain certain data for set periods of time.

"Many organizations have ILM initiatives or are interested in starting one because of all the publicity," says Jim Damoulakis, CTO at Glasshouse Technologies. "But the biggest driver is that storage costs are growing at an astronomical rate, and they're being mandated to cut the storage budget."

The vision of ILM is to classify data in terms of its business value and then align that value with how the data is stored, managed and protected. The result: reduced costs, maximized storage utilization, minimized redundancy and protection in regulatory compliance situations.

But that can only happen when users fully grasp what ILM means to them and their particular situation. According to the EUC survey, that isn't happening on a wide scale. Respondents said they had yet to develop fully defined ILM requirements or a business case for ILM.

"It's worse than virtualization as far as, 'What does it mean?'" says Cliff Dutton, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Ibis Consulting, Inc., a provider of electronic discovery and compliance solutions in Providence, RI.

Golden rule of ILM: Don't think 'product'

Part of the problem lies in the fact that ILM, above all else, is not a technology or product that can be purchased. It is a process that requires defining the value of data in the organization and then storing and protecting that data accordingly, even as its value changes over time. Value is defined by factors such as how critical the data is, how frequently it is accessed and how long it needs to be retained.

There's a range of technologies that