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Information lifecycle management from IBM

Executive summary

Business view

Technical details

The goal

Address the fluctuating value of data

The value of data to business operations fluctuates over time. Information lifecycle management (ILM) from IBM can help you manage different types of data in accordance with its business value—to better control costs and improve efficiency. If information management and storage is an issue, resolve it now and start to build sustainable efficiencies.

The advantage

Benefit from IBM's broad ILM capabilities

Only IBM can provide an integrated information lifecycle management (ILM) solution spanning the entire spectrum of ILM requirements, including process, organization, governance and technology.

The ILM solution captures best practices from IBM's world-class services organization, leveraging thousands of man-hours and hundreds of successful engagements.
IBM's extensive portfolio of best-in-class products with built-in support for a wide range of storage products offers multiple entry points, so we can deliver a flexible, customized roadmap that supports a wide range of requirements.
IBM's ILM architecture provides an enterprise-wide view of storage—rather than simply focusing on the hardware. When designing your solution, we also consider the management requirements associated with the storage.

The benefits

Target your biggest storage challenges

IBM can help you achieve your information management objectives through a range of capabilities that target your key objectives. We start by assessing your current environment and identifying your biggest challenges. We then determine what projects could be the best starting point. For example:

Optimize your storage environment.
- Identify initial storage management inefficiencies.
- Reclaim and consolidate storage space.
Increase flexibility and utilization with virtualization.
- Deploy virtualization capabilities to simplify your storage infrastructure by combining the physical capacity of multiple storage systems into a logical storage pool that can be centrally managed.
Maximize and sustain efficiency with integrated information lifecycle management.
- Classify and manage information, aligning the business value of your information with the most appropriate and cost-effective IT infrastructure.
- Resolve storage management inefficiencies by establishing enhanced management policies and governance models.
- Use Information Discovery, which provides intelligent search and discovery capabilities to help ensure rapid and accurate retrieval when information is needed.
Apply information lifecycle management process orchestration and automation.
- Implement a set of customizable policies that place information into an appropriately priced storage pool.
- Improve your response to dynamic business and storage needs by enhancing processes and automating provisioning, data movement and other storage processes.
Enhance information archiving and help ensure rapid retrieval.
- Intelligent search and discovery capabilities help speed access to stored information.
- Manage risk and streamline compliance using non-erasable, non-rewriteable storage to help protect against accidental or intentional alteration or deletion of information prior to its expiration.

The approach

IBM solutions have produced significant results

Information lifecycle management from IBM has helped our clients in a variety of ways.

IBM helped a large retail and corporate bank in Italy improve performance of its storage environment, increase productivity by 15 percent and save ¢æ500,000 with storage optimization.
A city government in the United States reduced the cost of managing its storage environment and increased storage infrastructure utilization by 45 percent when it implemented an IBM virtualization solution in its existing storage infrastructure.
A leading automotive company saved almost US$100,000 and conforms to stringent government requirements for data retention when it deployed an IBM archival solution.

The financial advantage

Realize near-immediate cost savings

Information lifecycle management from IBM is designed to deliver immediate cost savings by helping you reclaim storage space, better manage information and reduce information redundancy. In addition, the solution is designed to:

Help you align your IT investments with the business value of your information.
Match the type of storage used to the changing value of your information so you can utilize lower-cost storage options for lower-value information.
Reduce the risk of litigation through intelligent information retention policies and integrated search capabilities.
Lower costs by automating and streamlining storage management processes.

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