Remember ILM information lifecycle management on the various statements it? Around from last year, the acronym - ILM - had begun to fade out news headlines, and the new fashionable topic: data de-duplication (De-dupe) and thin provisioning(thin provisioning) information lifecycle management replaced the previous position.However, long ago, if you do not talk about this problem, we simply can not complete a press release about the storage or introduction.Is information lifecycle management ILM is really no longer important?
IDC analyst Laura DuBois that the concept of information lifecycle management is not wrong.But the publicity did not choose a good time.
DuBois said, "ILM information lifecycle management is a very important concept, it embodies how companies manage their information. It describes a brighter future." "But, although the vision has been described as out, buta tool to achieve this vision still has not kept up (so far still is). As a result, users began to feel doubt, which had a negative impact. "
Enterprise Management Associates (Enterprise Management Associates) analyst Mike Karp that the changes to any and ILM information lifecycle management-related things, it is inevitable.As technology advances and market changes in cognition, ILM concept may become more general, it may become more narrow, and may even become something completely different, such as tiered storage or hierarchical storage management (HSM, hierarchical storage management).
Karp said, "like the Hewlett-Packard (HP) company and companies like ILM EMC supporters still hope to solve many problems ILM." "This is the foundation of all is to understand the data in the life cycle value for each time point, and thenfor data distribution and storage commensurate with its value. "
Obviously, because the data often changes, it will be very dependent on an automated framework.Karp said that, fortunately, storage technology is now good support for this data is automatically migrated.Involved in the three benchmarks is becoming more and more powerful technologies: SATA disk drives, data migration software and data to understand the life cycle of data classification software.
Karp said, "even if the information lifecycle management ILM concept is no longer on the market often, ILM concept is still in the data center constantly create value."
EMC and ILM
Popularized the concept of EMC Corporation.In a few years ago the Storage Networking World (Storage Networking World, SNW) conference, an EMC company's executives made ILM information lifecycle management, the first public introduction.Overall, the results of EMC and storage software sales for the company are very good.According to data provided by IDC, the worldwide storage software market until the second quarter of 2007, has achieved 15 consecutive quarters of growth.Revenue reached about 28 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 10.4% over the same period last year.
Rhoda Phillips, an analyst at IDC, said, "Customers need to be more effective and more economical products to manage and protect their information, this requirement to promote the demand for storage software." "In particular, enterprises are facing increasingly stringentlaws and regulations, the risk of prosecution at any time, e-discovery needs are growing, it can be stored and HSM seen the rapid growth of the market, the market and achieved year on year growth of 14.9%."
EMC companies still account for 24.6% revenue share; the next Symantec (Symantec) companies accounted for 17.5% of the share; IBM Corporation accounted for 13.0%, while Network Appliance (NetApp) accounted for 10.7% of the companyshare.The current quarter, EMC's software revenue was 600 million 85 million U.S. dollars - which for once is a professional manufacturer of hardware for companies that have been pretty good.
EMC, said company spokesman Kevin Kempskie, ILM information lifecycle management strategy, EMC is still an important part.
Kempskie said, "ILM model is to solve long-standing customers have been faced with a problem: how to balance the high availability and efficiency of the information, and how the data generated from the destruction of the entire process through to a more intelligent management?" "These issuesstill exists today, but the IT environment becomes increasingly complex, ILM information lifecycle management has also been developed. It has become a broader part of strategy - a strategy also addresses the IT departments face every dayto make some headache issues such as how to protect critical assets, to achieve a more intelligent storage virtualization architecture of information and so on. "
For example, he referred to the Missouri State University (University of Missouri).EMC Corporation of the University and work together to help improve the school environment, the value of Microsoft Exchange information, performance and reliability.He said the use of EMC's software, the university has taken ILM strategy, automatically obtain the storage and transfer of information between layers, to speed up the Exchange backup and recovery, reducing storage management costs.He said the strategy well adapted to the growth of information to enhance their business value of Exchange environments.
Kempskie said, "in EMC, to help our customers store, protect, optimize the use of their information in the process, ILM is still a core element often used." "Even if the ILM is not to be mentioned every day, but itEMC is still the company and our customers an important part of business operations. "
He said that in a very large enterprise ILM has been very popular in the.These companies will likely use tiered storage, and will be applied to multiple applications into ILM, such as email or ERP.Moreover, the growing archive of information also contributed to the life-cycle management ILM products in the field of popular mobile data automatically, but also encourage enterprises to adopt strategies to achieve the record-keeping laws and regulations.
Kempskie said, "Automatic data classification solution slower than popular, but the customers and the market for this technology are the existence of demand, especially in the high-end users and high-end market, even more so." "EMC has also found that storagearchitecture as the user changes the priority of development and changes constantly. "
For example, data center security issue for many customers, EMC Corporation, have a higher priority.As a result, the company's efforts to develop software for RSA Security module, the module's development over the general, storage-based security features, such as encryption, single sign-on and authentication.
"Information-centric"
However, information lifecycle management ILM about the future, it will soon be replaced by other concepts.Kempskie that the IT sector in trying to get more information from the enterprise value, he considered to be more "information-centric" technology is emerging.
He said, "For the role of information, enterprises and individuals need to store, protect, optimize the use of their information." "Business aware if they can share information, to achieve 24x7 access to information, and to the information and otherinformation linked to retrieve relevant information quickly, it is used for decision-making process, and proper protection of information against unauthorized use, then it can bring tremendous value. "
So, EMC in the direction of the next step is to claim that: the information most effectively as a strategic asset management approach is the information architecture.EMC describes it as a share of the products, services, and information storage, information protection, information optimization best practices.
Kempskie said, "With the information architecture, people can avoid the huge number of potential risks, and greatly reduce the costs associated with information management, but also to leverage the value of information." "EMC information infrastructure that will gradually become the implementation of ILMstrategy to protect critical assets, and use information to improve the competitiveness of the operation of data center automation of the new foundation. "
Is no longer just an ideal
DuBois believes that if fully considered all the questions, ILM information lifecycle management may no longer just a fashionable concept of the ideal.But since it really well prepared to enter the market before, it has been over-marketed to users, so users of the concept is difficult to dispel doubts.However, she still believes, ILM concept to solve the memory is still plagued by administrators and IT managers an important issue - the amount of data continuing to grow, how can we adhere to all the data stored forever.
DuBois said, "As an industry, we need to develop processes, policies and software can effectively manage data retention, migration, and eventual elimination (for example, deleted)." "This needs based on business, legal and regulatory requirements, continue todeveloped, and the need to focus on data or information or content within the file. ILM information lifecycle management will continue to occupy an important position. "