Information Lifecycle Management (ILM)

 Market Review

CONTENTS:

ILM MARKET

	Definitions
	Market Drivers and IT Challenges
	Background
	ILM Phases of Adoption
	Market Segmentation
	Market Size and Growth

ILM MARKET

Definitions

ILM - Information Lifecycle Management: what is it?

The right data, on the right asset, at the right time.

Dynamically and seamlessly managing information according to its changing value over time.

A combination of technology Automated Data Migration (ADM) and process Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) to manage data from the time it is created until it is no longer needed.

SNIA has recently adopted the ILM Initiative (ILMI) in an attempt to bring clarity, focus, and potential standards for vendors and customers.

SNIA definition: "ILM is comprised of the policies, processes, practices, and tools used to align the business value of information with the most appropriate and cost-effective IT infrastructure from the time information is conceived through its final disposition."

ILM is the most talked-about term in the storage industry over the past year. Vendors are trying to position their products for the “ILM Market Space”, while customers are trying to grasp what it is, and analysts are making poor attempts at explaining it.

ADM - Automated Data Migration: what is it?

ADM software tools manage and implement the ILM process.

Seven Ten Storage Software is an example of a company that provides ADM tools and products to support the ILM process.

Market Drivers and IT Challenges

Compliance and regulatory requirements are demanding improved management, long-term retention and preservation while meeting new standards for access to information. Regulatory compliance initiatives such as HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, BASEL II, GLBA, and SB-1386 mandate retention of enormous amounts of data for specified time periods.

Compliance: “The New Y2K” "More than five years after Y2K garnered unprecedented attention from IT companies, here comes another issue that’s causing enormous disruption: compliance."

Compliance as Opportunity - another interesting article from the Insurance IT Industry: "Regulatory compliance is nothing new for insurance companies, but the menu of federal regulations that insurers now face brings unaccustomed challenges."

The tremendous growth of unstructured data (emails, attachments, images, spreadsheets, etc.) continues to be a significant cost problem for IT spending with continuing pressure on CIOs to manage more with less. ESG refer to unstructured as reference data and claim CAGR will be 92% through year 2006.

"Only 20 percent of the information that enters the typical insurance company is structured-such as forms with defined fields-according to Sarich, and 80 percent is unstructured; for example, written correspondence, faxes, phone calls and e-mails." John Sarich, industry marketing manager for insurance.

ILM primary focus is on unstructured data which is more difficult to manage than structured data i.e. databases. "Unstructured information is very loose and hard to manage." John Sarich

The value of data that organizations own has become much more variable and complex.

Introduction of a vast array of new low cost storage products offer the Datacenter both cost improvement opportunity and technology adoption challenges.

As storage venders provide new hierarchal tiers of storage products, software tools are needed to insure the “right data, is on the right asset, at the right time”.

Background

The term ILM is not a new and is handed down from conventional Records Management practice from the 80’s and 90’s. There has always been a need to Create, Receive, Capture, Collect, Organize, Use, Disseminate, Maintain, Protect,

Preserve, Archive, and Purge information. In the past two years, the ILM term has been adopted (some would say hijacked) by the Storage Industry.

Those of us who have been around for awhile will notice that ILM concepts also have origins from Mainframe Systems Managed Storage (SMS). SMS was used to automate data migration between memory, DASD, and tape based on access patterns, capacity requirements and policy management.

ILM Phases of Adoption

Phase 1: 1970’s – IBM Mainframe Systems Managed Storage

Systems Managed Storage (DFSMS) and Hierarchical Storage Management (DFHSM) provided reduced storage management cost by moving lesser accessed data to secondary storage and reducing the number of people required to manage storage.

Phase 2: 1990’s – HSM for “Open Systems”

HSM products determine and control for how frequently files are transferred to a secondary (lower cost) storage device. HSM generally moves information based upon the amount of time that has lapsed since the data was last accessed.  

HSM primary focus has been structured data as unstructured data is more difficult to manage. HSM has little concept of “value of data” or compliance requirements, both drivers of ILM adoption.

Phase 3: 2002 – Data Lifecycle Management (DLM)

DLM products operate with file attributes such as physical location, size, age, type, etc. DLM can set policy and practice around a block of data while ILM set policy and practice around information.

Phase 4: 2003 –Information Lifecycle Management (ILM)

ILM offers better granularity and more complex policies than HSM with primary focus on unstructured data.

LM operates on logical information such as account names, account numbers, etc. which is offers ease of deployment benefits over DLM and HSM.

ILM products operate on information and have a lower level of user management complexity that DLM product’s that operate on data.

Market Segmentation:

The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) segment the Enterprise Storage Management (ESM) Market into three main categories of solutions:

	Automated Resource Management (ARM)
	Data Management (DM)
	Automated Data Migration (ADM)

Market Size and Growth

Comments from Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG)

Enterprise Storage Management Market

	“The Worldwide market for Enterprise Storage Management solutions will grow from $3.2B in 2002 to $7.0B in 2006”
	The worldwide market for Enterprise Storage Management (ESM) software and solutions will grow at CAGR of 20%.

Automate Resource Management Market

The worldwide market for Automated Resource Management (ARM) storage management will grow CAGR of 51%.

The Worldwide market for Automate Resource Management applications will grow from 85M in 2002 to $436M in 2006

Data Management (DM) Market

The worldwide market for Data Management (DM) storage management applications will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18%.

Automated Data Migration (ADM) Market

The Worldwide market for Automated Data Migration (ADM) applications will grow to $778 Million in 2006. This is published in “What’s in Store” for Storage Software (we do not have the report but it is available for purchase).

The worldwide market for Automated Data Migration (ADM) storage management will grow in excess of CAGR of 70%.

A view from Gartner Group and Yankee Group

The potential size of this (ILM) emerging market is best viewed as a part of the storage-management market as a whole. Gartner Group recently predicted a $7.1 billion storage management market by 2008. And according to the Yankee Group, content storage (systems), a key element in implementing ILM, is one of the fastest growing segments, predicted to be a $1.3 billion market in 2006.