Need ILM? Try RIM

Computerworld - If I were to say the letters “R-I-M,” would you know what I was talking about? I see some hands go up; that’s good. I also see some quizzical looks. But that’s good too, because now I have your attention.

RIM stands for records and information management. RIM is a well established and time-honored profession that’s been in practice for decades. As a member of an enterprise IT department, you can probably find at least one RIM professional somewhere in the building. Now I’m going to suggest that, if you haven’t already, you make contact with that person (or persons, as the case may be).

Why?

Let me say three more letters: “I-L-M.” Ah, much better. You know of this acronym. That’s good again, because I’m now going to draw a circle around RIM and information life-cycle management. Here’s how a RIM professional would define his outlook:

“RIM professionals have worked for decades in the establishment of numerous standards, best practices and guidelines for managing records throughout their life cycle -- from creation to disposition, regardless of media type – in order to meet legal, regulatory, and knowledge management and preservation requirements .”

Sound familiar? If you’re involved with an ILM project, it may sound like what you’re up to -- particularly the part about legal, regulatory and preservation requirements. Here’s the Storage Networking Industry Association's definition of ILM:

The policies, processes, practices, services and tools used to align the business value of information with the most appropriate and cost-effective infrastructure from the time information is created through its final disposition. Information is aligned with business requirements through management policies and service levels associated with applications, metadata and data.

Notice a connection? It’s almost as if I can hear the RIM professionals saying, “Hey, IT people -- You want to align information with business requirements through management policies, etc, etc. – you know, that ILM thing? Well, we’ve been doing that for years.”

If you want to get started on the right ILM foot, collaborate with your local RIM professional. RIM professionals know that there are over 900 regulations in the U.S. alone that govern records retention. They hold as a core competency the ability to “define what types of records are critical elements of business processes, and translate this knowledge into a managed, sustainable, auditable records management process.”

A Final Note

Last week's column, "Why IBM should buy EMC", contained a reference to a personal medical event -- a blindly insensitive reference that did not belong. For this, I offer my sincere apologies to those whom I offended.

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