Solving the Information Management Puzzle

Ever-increasing quantities of electronic content are stored in organisations, fed in part by business
transaction data generated by CRM, point-of-sale, and other data-gathering applications, and by the
proliferation of unstructured content related to knowledge management, multimedia applications, and especially
the growth of e-mail traffic.

The quantities and disparate types and versions of information being stored make finding what users need
efficiently a problem, but the problem doesn’t end with access issues. Despite a long-term decline in the cost
of storing a given quantity of data, the volume of the increase and the management costs associated with
managing large data storage systems mean significant and growing expense for companies.

IT has long emphasised the tangible elements - PCs, servers, storage devices, networks and software, while the
business is only interested in information. Little effort has been made to understand the value of a specific
piece of information to the business, how its value fluctuates with changing business conditions, how to define
its life span, and what to do with it in each stage of its life.

Every new IT application or technology brings with it a new domain of information. Employees accumulate enormous
quantities of e-mail and personal files, much of which is never reviewed or deleted. Excessive redundancy adds
to the problems: backups of backups and multiple copies saved by users mean that numerous copies of the same
piece of information may exist, creating potential version-control problems as well as adding unnecessarily to
data volume.

The most visible negative effect of this vast and mushrooming amount of content is cost - of hardware and
software and the personnel needed to support it - a problem exacerbated by the common practice of treating all
information as “mission-critical,” and therefore to be supported by the best, highest-performing, most reliable
technology. In fact, a significant proportion of information stored and processed need not be immediately
accessible for critical business purposes. Some of it is information whose usefulness has declined or
disappeared over time. Some is information that never had high business value or any real business value.

Information headaches are not just an internal issue either. It is estimated there are now more than 20,000
regulations worldwide pertaining to the management of information. These regulations embody a new reality for
businesses, making them more transparent than ever before by moving their internal conversations and memories
into the public domain.

Solving The Puzzle
Information Life Cycle Management (ILM) offers a potential solution to the problems of expensive storage of
ever-growing quantities of data and need for reliable, timely access to particular content for business or
regulatory purposes. ILM embeds the principle that different information should be managed differently,
depending on its current value to the business.

The First Steps To ILM
1. Q&A. Many companies begin by asking straightforward questions: What should be kept? What can be deleted? What
must stay for immediate access? What needs to be moved to lower-cost storage?

The answers to such questions much involve collaboration - between the records manager, the business manager,
the legal department, the security officer, the data administrator, and the IT manager. ILM practices will be
only as successful as the commitment by all personnel to adopt and support them.

2. Defining data value - also known as classifying data - is the next step, and forms the foundation for follow
-on ILM best practices. Classification is an exercise with its own rigor and practices, and end users must work
hard at defining or refining their specific processes. Companies can begin the classification process at a
variety of levels - by department, owner or customer - and organise the data and information into groups based
on the value of the information.

3. Service levels. When data and information are classified - or sometimes as part of the classification process
- organisations can then determine management and service level objectives for that data: how available the must
data be, how it must be protected, how fast it needs to be recovered, how long it must be kept, what
governmental regulations apply for retention time and audits, and what department to charge back.

Keep management and service levels simple, straightforward and focused on your company's goals. Mission
critical, important to daily operations and not important are three levels that make a good starting point, but
some organisations may require several layers in between.

The resulting management and service level agreements are then examined in light of tiering the data -
establishing a hierarchy of physical storage systems needed to maintain service requirements. Some data may need
to be on primary storage and easily retrievable, while other data, which has lower service level objectives, can
be effectively placed on secondary storage systems.

For information about technologies to help you implement your ILM strategy please contact us or visit our storage section.