Information life cycle management (ILM to open and keep for English information lifecycle management surely on a long-term basis) are strategies to make methods and applications available around information automated according to their value and their use optimally on the most economical in each case storage medium.

The compound term originates from the USA and became from different memory system offerers 2003 as marketing Slogan auserkoren. Occasionally and in other meaning the term was already used in the 90's. The term sets information" from the components ", "Lifecycle" (English for life cycle; united out life cycle or life cycle to be able to form around a three-letter acronym) and "management" in the sense of the administration, handling and control of information in an information system. Comparable acronyms and terms with partially similar meaning are DLM DATA Lifecycle management (synonymously used for ILM), DLM document Lifecycle management (similarly uses as ILM and at the same time name of an initiative of the European commission and national archives of Europe) and CLM content Lifecycle management (and/or limited Web content Lifecycle management). ILM information life cycle management is particularly driven by regulations Compliance requirements, which make the archiving of information necessary. Related to the Enterprise content management model of the branch federation AIIM international ILM essentially covers the ECM components "Preserve" and "net curtain".

Information life cycle management

ILM brings a new quality into the administration of information, which goes the far beyond past STORAGE management. STORAGE solutions were regarded in the past more or less only as hardware components, which over file systems or special applications with information were fed. Safety requirements, paging strategies and the integration into networks led to combined hardware/software solutions - RAID (redundant array OF Independent disks), HSM (hierarchical memory management) and SAN (STORAGE AREA network) are here the associated acronyms. In the long run however the focus of the solutions was aligned to the administration of the memory components. ILM continues an important step. The storage of information orients itself now at life cycle and use of the information. ILM considers thereby both the aspects of dynamically variable information at the beginning of the Lifecycle and long-term archiving. Differently than with conventional document Lifecycle management or content Lifecycle management strategies no restricting on certain developments and types take place of information. ILM stores information indiscriminately from source and format. Thus will it also possible program versions, data, to include data bases and arbitrary contents into the administration. One can characterize ILM as the unification of different STORAGE, archives, content and document management technologies over the user a transparent interface and the system administrator one which can be administered simply to offer uniform memory platform.

Different definitions for information life cycle management

The manufacturers association for memory system solutions SNIA DATA management forum/SNIA information Lifecycle management initiative defines 2004 ILM as follows in March:

• ILM vision: "A new set OF management of practices based on aligning the business VALUE OF information ton the most appropriate and cost effective infrastructure".

• ILM definition: "Information Lifecycle management is compromised OF the policies, processes, practices, and tools used tons align the business VALUE OF information with the most appropriate and cost effective IT infrastructure from the time information is conceived through its finally arrangement. Information is aligned with business processes through management of policies and service level associated with applications, metadata, information, and DATA".

The market analysis enterprise internationally DATA corporation (IDC) defines ILM somewhat deviating from the SNIA:

• "The migration OF different classes OF DATA according ton the perceived VALUE ton the "most appropriate STORAGE" ton meet cost, performance, availability, recovery time, regulatory compliance, and OTHER organization objectives."

Different German-language definitions:

• "ILM is based a strategic concept, with which information is as cost-efficiently as possible administered, on the value for the organizations in timing. "

• "ILM is a strategy, which administers information actively over its complete life cycle away. It standardizes all data types, from structured data base information about halfstructured enamels up to unstructured files, Web contents and Rich Media. The ILM strategy be based on pre-defined rules, with which processes are automated and more simply to be controlled are. Key for the realization of this vision is close cooperating of memory hardware, STORAGE management and content management. "

• "Information Lifecycle management describes, like data between the organizational units of an enterprise to be moved, based on business-referred rules (Business Rules and Policies). ILM does not represent a process and to product-related beginning, which must be independent of the" underlying "storage technology in each case. "

The BITKOM published a manual about information Lifecycle management. In summary is there formulated:

• "ILM is not a product, but a combination of processes and technologies. A goal is it to have the correct information at the right time at the correct place with smallest costs. This is reached during a permanent optimization process. The optimization process receives its parameters on the one hand by external defaults (value of the information, safety requirements, service level Agreements etc.) and on the other hand by the existing layered storage with the cost structures which are under it. When decisions result result of the optimization process, where information objects are to be stored best and/or like baking UP, Replikations, displacement, misalignment and archiving functions be steered are. For an efficiently working ILM are necessary certain payments in advance. Virtualisierung for on-line, Nearline and NAS range are examples. Due to the separation of the logical view from the physical view ILM is put into the position to platzieren information objects due to the process decisions optimally."

PROJECT CONSULT defined ILM as follows in the year 2003:

• "Information Lifecycle management are strategies to make methods and applications available around information automated according to their value and their use optimally on the most economical in each case storage medium to open and keep surely on a long-term basis. "

These more or less different formulations show that today a clear allocation from products to the Marketingslogan ILM is still hardly possible today. But the discrepancy between the marketing messages and the material products is too large.

User requirements at ILM solutions

The need for storage technologies grows in the immeasurable. The tide of the information rises ever faster. It does not go making available long any longer therefore, simply ever more memory: An effective administration is demanded. It begins with the emergence of information and ends with the disposal. A constant concept is necessary, in order to administer the information according to their value, its life cycle and its use. ILM orients itself thereby at the urgent problems, which load today IT-managers:

• E-Mail
• Unification of detailed information from different sources in a post office entrance basket

• Process-steered supply and control of information

• Long-term archiving of relevant information for the fulfilment of regulations and legal defaults

• Central managable, uniform memory places for most different types of information

• Overcoming of the medium break between paper and electronics, in addition, between electronic information and data in different applications

• Supply independently of information of source, medium, producer, place and time

• Itself automatically securing systems, in order to master the critical, more largely becoming dependence on the availability of the information

• Purposeful one, data base-supported access to the information

• Automated segregation information any longer necessary at expiration of the life cycle

• Acquisition of right security with electronically marked documents

• Migration to the safety device of valuable existing information in new system environment

The employment of the tasks specified from ILM solutions to the accomplishment is not economically meaningful only, it is in many industries already vitally necessarily over in the competition to exist to be able.

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