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Contents 
Introduction
The long road to ILM
E-mail is the word
More than just messages
Learning to let go
Screensound builds an ILM
10 things to know about ILM |
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A major part of that architecture involves a large mindshift: implicit with the idea that information has a lifecycle is the idea that it will die at some point, usually after it's no longer statutorily required. That's a fundamental shift in the way data is viewed, and in the way that IT works. Having spent decades building systems big and fast enough to process and store all the information that businesses produce, IT planners must now contemplate the systematic deletion of that information.
Introspection and assessment of internal information priorities will soon highlight exactly what information can go and when. It's a hard process, but companies will be better off for it in the end. It has become clear that ILM is a combination of all of these activities and others that aren't become totally clear yet and vendor's approaches to ILM may be far from illuminating, and even dangerously limited in scope for customers seeking to capitalise upon it.
There promising signs -- last month StorageTek unveiled OpenSMS (Open System Managed Storage), a proposed standard it believes will point the direction for future ILM efforts. OpenSMS includes OpenHSM for interacting with managed online file systems, and OpenTMS (Open Tape Management System), a removable media management solution that includes source code from StorageTek's ReelLibrarian software.
Whether StorageTek's standard gains traction, or simply paves the way for competing standards from other companies, remains to be seen. Either way, it will be some time before such standards become practical.
One thing is clear -- given the expectations around ILM and the promise of its underlying philosophy, every business should at least know what ILM is about and how its use might benefit them. E-mail management systems are the only actionable component of ILM available so far, so they should be an initial focus.
"I don't think you can talk about ROI from an ILM perspective, but [you can] from a bits and pieces perspective," says Phil Sergeant, research director for servers and storage with Gartner Asia-Pacific.
"A lot of organisations really don't know who's creating and using information within their organisation, so the starting-off process requires a more intimate understanding of their information. They need to understand it from a performance and security perspective."
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