Ilm 1 Year On 1.0
Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) was coined as a term in late 2002. Its origins are obscure, but it is most likely that it came from the thinking of certain strategists at StorageTek.
It was always a great theory. Spawned from the idea that there was more to storing data than – well – storage, the thinkers set about making it work better. The central concept is that storage can be categorised according to how fast it is, and how expensive it is. This is a sliding scale – fast (think high-end disk) tends to be expensive, and slow (think tape) tends to be cheap, with several categories in between. Now, thought the thinkers, what if data could be similarly categorised? If so, high-value data could be stored on top-end disks, and so on.
Where the idea got really clever, was the inclusion of software to shift data from one storage platform to another, depending on how it was being used. Hang on, thought the storage diehards, wasn’t this just a re-hash of Hierarchical Storage Management, a dynamic archiving technique? Well, yes, and no. First, HSM was one-dimensional, covering only the time value of data and nothing to do with its value to the business. Second, and because of this, ILM requires proactive classification of data using real human beings. Finally, HSM was largely about archiving of old data. If ILM is done right, the concept of archiving goes away, replaced by a continuity of dynamic data movement.
So, as a practical reality ILM has existed for about a year now. How has it evolved? First off, there was a danger that (like many good ideas) it would be turned into a sales vehicle by the collective marketing departments of storage vendors. EMC was quick to jump on the bandwagon, and a number of other companies including Veritas have adopted the idea of “Lifecycle Management” – in Veritas’s case, it is Data Lifecycle Management. Hewlett Packard and IBM are also using the ILM phrase, but it is buried further down in the messaging.
As marketing took hold, it became clear that there were a number of issues with how ILM was being presented. First, while ILM might be a good idea in principle, it was not articulated in a straightforward manner and nobody understood it from the customer side. Second, in a number of cases (including StorageTek, who thought of it) it really was little more than marketing – both because companies saw it as so, and because they didn’t put their whole product lines behind delivering on it. Third and finally, to work, it required a much more comprehensive approach to storage solution delivery than had existed in the past, requiring a holistic architectural view and services to support its delivery.
Despite these issues, the vendors have stuck with ILM, indeed they have emphasised its importance. The reason being, that it really is the right answer for the same reason that a more service-oriented delivery of IT is the right answer: of course storage should be treated with far more attention to its business implications. There are other reasons, not least the emergence of compliance as a key driver for improved storage solutions. A compliant solution is an integrated solution, and ILM offers an approach to support such integration. As a result however, vendors have recognised that they need to make a bigger effort if they want to make things work.
Believe it or not, the vendors are starting to get what has to be done. Not least, they are on the whole recognising that it needs to be services driven: for example, EMC has announced an assessment and classification service that is an entry point to ILM, and StorageTek has augmented its services organisation with ILM in mind. Channel companies like Dimension Data and Glasshouse Technologies are also reacting to the trend, augmenting their storage offerings accordingly.
Second, and perhaps more important are the growing partnerships with content management companies. EMC acquired Documentum, and StorageTek has partnered with Ixos, which is merging with Opentext. The reasons why ILM can benefit from Content Management (CM) are long and complex, but suffice it to say, CM has long had both feet firmly planted in the business, even while Storage management is still trying to open the door to the data centre.
Progress is being made, but there is still a way to go. Computer Associates have just announced the addition of security features to their BrightStor range: laudable perhaps, but even considering the impact that the Internet has had, it begs the question, why weren’t such features considered as standard for the past three decades? There are ongoing integration requirements to improve management capabilities, for example by incorporating policy-based ILM with other aspects of enterprise management; also it is still early days for such ideas as adaptive storage and automated management.
Still newer requirements are dynamic provisioning and storage accountability, coupled with building in the financial aspects of storage service delivery. A data store should be able to report exactly how much it is costing to store the data, down to the byte if necessary: only in this way can the vision of ILM, to move data according to dynamic assessment of cost/benefit, be addressed. Once this exists it can be linked up into application costs, and ultimately the business can have a clear, transparent picture of how much its storage is costing. At that point, there is a question of whether it should still be called ILM, but it’s as good a name as any.
Ultimately however, even if ILM is the right answer, it can only work if businesses want it to be so. This is a bigger issue than some might imagine. Businesses don’t necessarily feel they need to know how they work, and therefore they’re not in any hurry to say what they need. However, they do expect IT to deliver, which suggests a paradox. We can come up with all the acronyms we like, but they are nothing more than ongoing efforts to make IT work for the business. For ILM to succeed, it needs to be considered in the round, alongside other aspects of IT delivery.