back to article Why is ILM such a failure?

Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) promised much but delivered very little in practice; it was complex to implement and patchy in its coverage of a business's information assets. Now HP is having another canter around the ILM block... Will it succeed? Here's HP's ILM vision: "HP brings a holistic approach to information …

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  1. jake Silver badge

    Operations management ...

    ... by any other name (usually with a TLA) is a means of keeping otherwise useless middle management employed.

    Hint: Call it "operations management". Ban any other name. Fire everyone who tries to change this rule. Make it a corporate bye-law. It's worked everywhere I've implemented it ...

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    George Lucas, you're a failure

    ILM = Industrial Light & Magic surely.

    Can't the non-delivery brigade at least invent original TLAs for their promises?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Not to be confused with

      Microsoft Identity lifecycle manager.

      So many letter combinations - so few TLAs

    2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: inventing original TLAs

      It's OK. As the article points out...

      "Global ILM is, I fear, a chimera, brochure imaginings, and destined to be always so."

      ...George's ownership of this TLA is in no danger.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Industrial Light and Magic?

    And the article turned out not to be about a new stream editing software product from ILM.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    This is close...

    This is very close but it doesnt address management on primary storage:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUxgG9wO6-I

    Cofio's at least models data movement to different locations with different retention periods. It ticks many of SNIA's ILM check boxes. If they could add the management of data on the primary, they would be closer by a mile to anyone else.

    ILM is such a dirty word in the industry. I'm surprised that HP released this under the ILM umbrella knowing what a minefield the term is.

  5. AndrewG
    Stop

    Disk is Cheap, and ILM isn't

    The only real use for ILM is in companies that have regulatory requirments to ensure data deletion. I went through an analysis last year using a non-HP ILM product and the bottom line always was it never actually paid for itself against just whacking in a bunch of SATA and SAS disk every 6 months.

    Information management and things like dashboards sound good to middle management types, but keeping below their budget sounds a lot better to them.

    A proper ILM solution requires quotas, rigid attention to file type control and maybe data fingerprinting. All of this can take a little bit out of the Non-IT employees day (you know..the guys that actually are their to make money for the organistation) so however much the IT managers hat propeller spins at the thought..he's never going to get it past anyone on the money making side with an ounce of sense without a fairly draconian business case or playing the "we don't have a choice" card.

  6. Chris Mellor 1

    Sent to me by....

    ... an industry insider:-

    A pitch-perfect article on ILM. "Incomplete Literature Musings" might fit the acronym better. It was always a big logical and physical jump for storage vendors to leap from physical disks to information management by way of storing data.

    No one vendor, however richly endowed with marketing dollars and R+D budgets can expect to corner this market. A long line have tried, with very mixed results. Who will be the firstbrave vendor to offer cloud storage with ILM as a sweetener?

    Despite all the hype, the big storage issues today are much as they were 5, 10, 20 years ago... performance, availability, connectivity and security.

    ------------------

    Chris.

  7. J. Cook Silver badge
    Go

    Had me confused me a minute there...

    I had mistaken ILM for Identity Lifecycle Management, a product which has caused me considerable frustration in the last several months.

    Fortuantely, it's slated to be replaced. Unfortuantely, it knows this, and has decided to not go quietly into the dustbin. :(

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Global ILM is, I fear, a chimera, brochure imaginings, and destined to be always so

    Sounds like just the sort of thing that consults love and executives lap up.

  9. Sam Adams the Dog

    Anything for sale implying "lifecycle" is useless

    i'm only a dog, but for example, whenever anyone tries to sell me on "total cost of ownership", i know right away that i can't afford it.

    -SATD.

    1. alwarming
      Paris Hilton

      ILM is buzz TCO can be handy.

      TCO by itself is a pretty useful tool. It's the (over/incorrect)application to sell a bad product is bad. Instinctively one does TCO calculations all the time in your life as a buyer:

      Why people buy sucky japanese cars over sturdy germans ? TCO.

      Why buy CLF over incandescent ? TCO.

      Why pay taxes over being a fugitive ? TCO.

      Why buy a 300$ phone w/o contract than a 50$ with one ? TCO.

      In enterprise worlds, companies like IBM are restructuring themselves to give you a low cost(= low barrier) of entry and a high TCO for lifetime. Windows is another example of high lifetime TCO if you add downtimes, anti-virus, office suite.

      Marry or date Paris ?

  10. Pahhh
    Stop

    ILM another bandwagon...

    ILM was another bandwagon but an older one. One I thought had long died. Very few companies have come close to ILM simply because its so encompassing. When a product is a point solution you can pretty much guaranty that its nothing like ILM. Some products that really do move data to different places, manage it differently are getting close. Its not remotely what HP is offering now.

    Think the term should die just to be on the safe side.

    Oh and other terms that should die include:

    - "Cloud"

    - "Big Data" (this I fear will be 2011 buzzword)

    @Sam... I think I may have to disagree with the "tocal cost of ownership" comment. TCO helps to put the price of things into perspective. My car was relatively cheap new and kicks a lot of horsepower and is kind of fun. However it has terrible TCO; it cost a lot insure, service, tax and drinks petrol. Think same goes for a lot of IT solutions. Now in fairness I knew what all those things were before I bought it and I knew I could afford it, but the point is if you were buying a car with a budget, you will check the cost of servicing, tax, fuel, insurance, etc. Problem with a lot of TCO stuff from IT people I grant you is that its done by marketing people and there isnt any actually math behind the numbers.

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