Information Lifecycle Management

Information Life Cycle Management: 

There is an impression today that management of the information lifecycle is a new concept. Management of the information lifecycle has been with us since the dawn of the computer age. fundamentals of information management have not changed.

At CreekPath Systems we have a deep understanding of managing information systems. We believe that business is about agility and effective management of systems, people and processes. CreekPath equates this agility and management to the information lifecycle.

Data movement between different types of storage to optimize costs and opportunities hasn't changed. The difference is that now we have more choices. With more choices come increased complexity and the opportunity to succeed (or fail) in new and improved ways. Remember that moving data around various storage media is not the key to success. Efficient and effective management of information and the supply chain of systems that supports it is the direct enabler of business agility. The more effective an enterprise can manage the supply chain, in real time, the more agile the business becomes.

Information Lifecycle Management - What is it?

There are many definitions of Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) in the industry today. All of these definitions have one thing in common: understanding what information means to the business and optimizing costs and opportunities.

Information Lifecycle Management definitions
Information Lifecycle Management is an approach to information and storage management that takes into account the ways that information changes over time, as well as the degree to which automation is required to manage, protect and migrate information as its value changes.

Information Lifecycle Management as a series of technologies and processes that enable resource optimization, effective data protection and superior application performance.

Information Lifecycle Management is a sustainable storage strategy that requires balancing the cost of storing and managing information with its changing value over time. ILM provides a practical methodology for aligning storage costs with business priorities.

You will notice that the discussion above mentions very little about the technological details of running a data center. The questions are presented from a business-centered point of view. These are eternal questions that transcend any particular technology or process. And that is precisely the point; the answers, when put in business terms, serve to guide implementation and management of the information over the entire span of its life.

In reality, it is impossible to computerize a business process without engaging in some form of ILM, no matter how primitive. Most, if not all, businesses have been doing ILM at some level all along, the only difference now is the number of choices available and in turn the number of decisions to make on how to manage the information. Three key pieces of knowledge will help you determine where to go from here.

1. Where are you now?
2. Where do you want to go?
3. At what cost?

Finding out where you are now is no small feat. It requires a careful analysis of the enterprise's real needs. The best way to find out the requirements for information lifecycle management is with a zero based analysis starting with the key questions listed above. A critical success factor will be deciding how to classify the application's and information's relative importance at any given point in its life. The relative importance most certainly will change over time.

Discovery and classification is the process of unearthing the answers to the above questions. Today, these questions are difficult to answer and, as you would expect, the answers change over time. The challenges in answering theses question lay in the fact that it is difficult to visualize, at any given moment in time, how the infrastructure is actually deployed and used. Can you imagine setting out on a journey with no milestones, markers, signposts or clues about where you are at any given moment? Even though you may clearly visualize your destination this is of little use if you do not know where you are at any given time during the journey.