Information Lifecycle ManagementFrom the time you create information through the time you dispose of it, information has a value to your business. New information tends to be vitally important and accessed frequently. Older information may be needed less often (e.g., for quarterly reporting) or permanently stored only for regulatory purposes.
ILM is a philosophy, not a stand-alone solution. At the heart of the philosophy is the belief that every piece of data has a corresponding business value. For example, you may want to store vital, frequently accessed information on high-performance enterprise disk to ensure availability and rapid access. Conversely, you may want to store compliance information on tape to take advantage of its low cost per gigabyte. Using ILM as a guiding principle helps you keep information safe, secure, and available at the lowest reasonable cost.
Determining the Value of Your Data There is no question that all corporate data has some value, but there is so much information that you must carefully organize it for manageability. To do this, you have to ask:
• How do I determine the relative value of the data?
• How will the value change with time and/or classification?
• Will the value impact where the data is physically stored?
Structured specializes in ILM, and we can give you the direction you need to effectively manage your information according to its business value. We provide expert advice and products to optimize your storage and access according to your budget. Furthermore, we can help you plan for your future storage needs as your business grows.
Our ILM solutions drive out the costs and risks related to data management. They also effectively support the applications that sustain your revenues. Structured’s ILM solutions provide business value by:
• Improving bottom line efficiency by helping you evolve toward automated,
policy-based data storage (in which the cost of storage is aligned with the
value of data)
• Minimizing business risks by providing simple, predictable and reliable data
storage solutions with standardized tools and consistent policies
• Reducing data management complexity by allowing users to consolidate
storage across their enterprises and by enabling easy integration with existing
platforms and applications
• Improving revenue generation by enabling the applications that drive
business, such as customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise
resource planning (ERP) and business intelligence tools
• Sustaining operations and protect archived data
• Helping data management evolve from being people-dependent to being
process-dependent
