I just ran into an interesting blog kept by Dennis Kennedy, which led me to a rather informative WP on ILM that he authored, titled:
Making 'the Right' Decision at the Information Lifecycle Management Crossroads
.
I believe Kennedy wrote that WP for Renew Data Corp. (you can download the document from their site) but it's nonetheless worthy reading because his analysis of ILM is not constrained by specific vendors solutions.
People dealing with ILM are at a crossroad, says Kennedy:
One path is to continue with first-generation ILM approaches - ad hoc, after-the-fact, hit-or-miss and vendor-focused, but targeted at problems that actually have occurred, thus benefiting from the learning of actual experiences. The second path, more appropriate today, is to move toward second generation ILM approaches - needs-based and built on integrated business, compliance and policy rules from the beginning, and with a long-term, forward-looking outlook in which upfront investments are traded for long-term savings and other benefits.
It makes sense to me, even more so because Kennedy's points echo others I heard during a recent conversation with Sun and Deloitte Consulting, jointly announcing the institution of the Center for Technology Governance and Compliance (CTGC)
While you digest this new acronym, let me give a little background on CTGC.
Part of the dowry brought by StorageTek was an existing partnership with Deloitte, that a new agreement extends now to Sun Microsystems but with a more ambitious goal than just the compliance and archiving assessment services offered before.
Most companies are still adding specific point solutions (for ILM) but they need to start a journey to make sure that what they run meets not only the operational needs but also the governance and compliance needs of their business
says Lee Dittmar, principal at Deloitte Consulting.
It's a journey that we are just beginning and is in that context that this initiative between Deloitte and Sun comes together
concludes Dittmar.
The two companies have also jointly published a WP that titles: "Raising the Bar for Governance and Compliance" available for download here .
Tired of all this ILM talking? Well, you shouldn't be. ILM is a very important topic and as an IT professional part of your job is to steer your company to make the right choices.
Anybody who tells you differently is either poorly informed or drunk, you decide which.
What's the impact on storage management of HP acquiring AppIQ? What challenges are customers facing when implementing SRM? Is Aperi for real?
Eric Pitcher, VP of BrightStor product management for Computer Associates answers these and other questions in this interview. It's about 10 minutes. Please click below to download or listen.
I was having a relaxed chit chat over the phone with Rob Davis, PR Emeritus (he works for Haberman & Associates) when out of the blue he asks:
Mario, it seems like EMC has a lot of press releases on ILM (information lifecycle management), but how can your readers really get a sense of what the product does?
To give some context Rob is an advocate on behalf of Compellent and we have debated in the past if their Data Progression technology makes their products an effective alternative to ILM solutions.
My answer:
There does seem to be confusion out there about ILM, and many companies claim this functionality
Rob:
A lot of vendors are trying to get on board with the buzzword because they see money being spent to market it. What's lost is what the products really do. In addition to covering product announcements, couldn't there also be a comparison, or even a 'bakeoff' of sorts, of various ILM solutions?
me:
It's certainly interesting, but how could such a comparison be done? Consider all the variables. What would the RFP look like?
Rob:
Administrators we work with had been looking for a multi-tiered storage environment that allows them to save money without the complexity of application data classification. You have to address both multi-tier and data classification issues.
me:
Now we're talking about DLM (data lifecycle management) these products seem to be focused on reducing the total cost of storage. For ILM there seems to be a line drawn at the application layer. The systems have awareness of the type of data. Previously I was an application developer and worked with many of these technologies. It's for this reason that ILM tends to address more issues regarding compliance.
Rob:
I agree with your distinction. With that in mind, do you think ILM and DLM receive an equal amount of coverage?
me:
It's difficult to say.
Rob:
It just seems like, and this could be a mistaken impression, that we hear about ILM a lot, but there are actually more storage administrators who could benefit from DLM, from taking that step onto a SAN that can automatically move data between classes of storage.
me:
You know, we should extend this discussion to include other people. Why don't we ask InfoWorld readers and see what they think?
Well, now the ball is on your turf: Should we downsize ILM for technologies that in Rob's words automatically move data between classes of storage?
Should we call this stripped down approach to ILM DLM?
Rob doesn't know this yet, but another vendor came to me suggesting that there is a need for a simplified version of ILM and they also call that DLM, go figure!
I look forward to your answers, here or via e-mail.
The news of HP acquiring OuterBay was a surprise for me, but not a shock. Thinking of it, it's quite natural for HP to bring home a suite of products that carries on the most difficult part of implementing an ILM (information lifecycle management) strategy.
Perhaps more surprising is that EMC let the "Golden Boy" of ILM fly into the competition's hands. After all EMC has been on a shopping spree for some time...
We'll probably never know the details of what happened, but if you're curious about why HP is interested in purchasing OuterBay, I can only repeat what I said in this column last September (the OuterBay part is in the second half of the article).
Will it matter for other partners, including EMC, that OuterBay will be acquired by HP?
Frankly, I don't have a clue. HP is not talking much about the OuterBay deal and many things, for example, the terms of the transaction, the assignment of personnel, and other details, are for now unknown.
My guess is that HP might indeed be tempted to close its arms around OuterBay and keep that jewel away from other vendors, but it won't do it after all.
Why? For example, to keep a steady flow of revenues coming from territories outside of HP control, such as the large provinces of EMC storage.
Nevertheless, it's reasonable to ask oneself why HP was not satisfied with just a partnership.
May be to get more control over future developments? Or to create tighter integration with own products? Or to establish a preferential relationship that competitors won't have?
Perhaps all of these reasons and a few more that I can't think of right now.
where I suggested that the term is, how to put it, slightly over-hyped. But let's hear from Bill's own words.
Mario,
I've reached a conclusion over the last year or so about storage vendors. How many of their products are ILM products? All of them. Just ask them.
I have an actual desire to find and implement an ILM strategy. Unfortunately I have to hunt through the haystack of every product that's on the market to find the few needles that might actually be useful. And cut through all the hype to find out if they actually do anything.
My impression is that when you read about a product, the more regurgitation of industry trends, customer needs, and buzzwords, the less actual content they have to tell you about. Right now that seems to be most of them.
It's not an unusual circumstance. We need to get past the industry hype to some new "save the industry" technology so that this one will settle back down to reality and we can see what we're looking at through the glare of the marketing full court press.
The same thing has happened or is happening with SAN's, blades, virtualization, "on demand", consolidation, iSCSI, infiniband, grid computing, etc etc.
To your analogy about hammers and nails. I'm the one that has a hammer (budget), and they are trying to tell me that everything they sell is a nail (ILM). Yes, I now find the use of the term irritating since it lacks any meaning from the vendor usage point of view.
Thank you very much for your note, Bill. In that column I asked if the ILM hype is irritating and your answer is a vehement "yes!".
While we wait for others to cast their vote (please use the reply on this blog or just e-mail me), let me ask this: " is there any vendor who wants to accept the challenge and help Bill hit the ILM nail on the head?
My e-mail address is easy to find: Send me your suggestions for ILM products and I will be glad to forward them to Bill.
A question that often comes forward, perhaps pushed by the "disk only for backups" fanatics, is why you should even consider a reel for data protection.
Well try "resilience" for an answer. The often maligned tape can survive conditions where a disk drive becomes just a useless paperweight.
Of course we all know or should know that but here is a movie clip that gives a practical example of that concept.
If that clip didn't work for you try choosing a different format or speed or even another clip here)
What you just saw is a simulation of a terrorist attack to a bus. Before the simulation the bus was equipped with an A4S mobile surveillance system from ShiftWatch that captures continuous audio, video and GPS data, which makes possible to identify the exact time date and location of an event, the blast of a bomb, for example.
How do you make sure that recorded data will survive a catastrophic event? ShiftWatch takes a belt and suspenders approach, doing dual recordings to both disk and tape for redundancy.
Back to that clip you can see the blast of 10 pounds of explosive that literally strips down the bus to bare metal.
The hard disk drive was destroyed, but the Sony AIT tape used in the system withstood the blast preserving data and video up to within seconds of the explosion.
Now, I wouldn't recommend using 10 pounds of explosive to see if your tapes survive, but to paraphrase an old Army truism "don't send a disk drive where you can send a tape"
NEWS 
