Information Lifecycle Management

Submitted by Tina DiMarcantonio, Newsletter Editor


The new buzzword on the market in 2004 is Information Lifecycle Management (ILM). With an increasing number of data retention regulations and excessive database growth, ILM is mentioned more frequently – in marketing literature, industry and analyst articles, and in everyday conversation among technology experts. But what exactly is ILM, and what is needed to implement this strategy?

From acquisition until final disposal, data and information move through a lifecycle. Over time, the business value and access requirements of that data change. Certain data may not be accessed for years, its business value subsequently lowered until it is needed. However, data retention regulations require easy access to that data for a specific number of years, depending on the type of industry.

Excessive database growth makes it impractical for data to remain on the production database for very long. After a while, application performance suffers and the amount of time needed for maintenance tasks increases. No company can afford the risks or costs associated with a sluggish database. And overloaded databases can limit availability and directly impact disaster recovery time. So what are the options for managing historical data that must remain accessible for compliance?

Companies Look Toward Information Lifecycle Management

ILM is a strategy for managing and storing data based on its business value and access requirements over time. Gartner explains that to begin developing an ILM strategy, users must define the value of each set of data at various points in the lifecycle (Reference 1). Data can be separated into phases; for example, acquisition, heavy access, medium access, rare access and disposal. By implementing database archiving and storage strategies that meet the accessibility requirements of each phase, companies can reduce the cost of managing and storing data, while ensuring compliance.

A database archiving solution is essential for any ILM strategy. The ideal database archiving solution allows for archiving rarely accessed data from a production database and saving it to a separate medium. At the point of diminishing returns, it is beneficial to move data from high-cost, high-speed storage to a less expensive storage medium, allowing for easy access on demand. As a result, the production database performs to its potential; the time for disaster recovery and maintenance tasks is greatly reduced; and your company remains in compliance with data retention regulations.

Complying with Your Industry’s Data Retention Regulations

Any policies that are set up for an ILM strategy must retain data long enough to comply with the specific industry’s data retention requirements. For example, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires record retention for a minimum of six years and two years after a patient’s death. In the financial industry, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires record retention for five years after the end of the fiscal year. The Fair Standards Labor Act (FSLA) requires employee payroll records to be kept for two to three years. Government contractors must keep track of books, documents and accounting practices for one to four years. Law firms must also retain records such as employee information for at least one year (Reference 2). It’s important to identify the types of data and retention requirements in your industry to plan a cost-effective ILM strategy.

Searching for ILM Solutions

The basic tools for implementing an effective ILM strategy are still in the development stages. Gartner predicts that through 2005, ILM will be 80 percent vision and 20 percent products (Reference 1). Some major players have acquired some of what are now considered the necessary tools for ILM (Reference 2). Meanwhile, smaller vendors are turning their efforts toward clean integration and adding ILM value to their solutions.

As the market leader in database archiving, Princeton Softech’s Active Archive™ Solutions are essential for ILM. By archiving complete sets of rarely accessed data quickly, safely and accurately, and offering a variety of storage alternatives, these solutions provide the necessary capabilities for every phase in the information lifecycle. Your company can manage and store archived data using the most cost-effective and convenient storage medium: online in an archive database, near-line on a file server, offline to tape, disk-based WORM device or EMC Centera™. Active Archive Solutions retain the referential integrity of the archived data, allow for selective restore when needed, and ensure easy access on demand, enabling companies to reduce the cost of compliance.

Princeton Softech’s Active Archive Solutions are available for both the mainframe (Archive™ for DB2) and open systems (Archive™ for Servers) environments, enabling companies to implement proven database archiving technology across the enterprise.

Several application-specific editions provide “out-of-the-box” capabilities for easier implementation:

Archive™ for DB2 PeopleSoft® Enterprise Edition
Archive™ for Servers PeopleSoft® Enterprise Edition
Archive™ for Servers Oracle® Applications Edition
Archive™ for Servers ClarifyCRM™ Edition
Archive™ for Servers PeopleSoft® EnterpriseOne Edition

As part of an ILM strategy, Active Archive Solutions are effective in improving performance and availability while lowering the total cost of ownership (TCO).

References:

[1] Carolyn DiCenzo, “Predicts: Information Life Cycle Management Storage,” Research Note 2003, Gartner, November 17, 2003.
[2] Jerome M. Wendt, “Starting the ILM process,”
Storage Magazine, December 2003.