The Key to Information Lifecycle Management is Cost-Effective Backup

Information Lifecycle Management is a relatively young concept and the industry will continue to encounter pitfalls as ILM solutions develop. As it stands at the moment, ILM has two aims: to reduce administration costs and to make the most efficient use of storage hardware. But in order to achieve these, ILM needs to rely on an ILM-aware backup system. A backup architecture lacking the ability to maximize the use of ILM will reduce any chance of successfully realizing the goals of cost reduction and greater storage efficiency.

Why the need for ILM?

Reliable and secure data storage is crucial to business continuity plans. With the dependence enterprises have on information about their technical processes, data storage is becoming somewhat of a headache for IT executives and storage administrators the world over. Moreover, many industries such as finance and healthcare are facing new regulations that require enterprises to conform to evolving regulations about data retention. These requirements, as well as the increasing amount of data that enterprises store, mean that the cost of managing information can grow up to 20 to 30 percent per year. With estimates such as these, the need for cost-effective data storage and its management becomes of paramount importance to enterprises and IT managers.