Information life-cycle management defined

The idea of information life-cycle management is to set up a process for managing access to data that reflects the value of that data to an organization. The more valuable data is, the more accessible it should be.

In hardware, the multitiered nature of ILM could include anything from Fibre Channel disk arrays, which provide high-speed access, to archival options such as Advanced Intelligent Tape, Digital Linear Tape and Linear Tape-Open. In between, midline storage solutions include

content-addressed storage products — a category EMC Corp. launched — and Serial Advanced Technology Attachment disk arrays.

The software component of ILM includes storage resource management, enterprise content management and data life-cycle management products, each of which help automate the process of managing and migrating data.