Information lifecycle management (ILM) refers to strategies for administering storage systems on computing devices.
ILM is the practice of applying certain policies to effective information management. This practice had its basis in the management of information in paper or other physical forms (microfilm, negatives, photographs, audio or video recordings and other assets).
ILM includes every phase of a "record" from its beginning to its end. And while it is generally applied to information that rises to the classic definition of a record (and thus related to records management), it applies to all informational assets. During its existence, information can become a record by being identified as documenting a business transaction or as satisfying a business need. In this sense ILM has been part of the overall approach of enterprise content management.
However, in a more general perspective the term "business" must be taken in a broad sense, and not forcibly tied to direct commercial or enterprise contexts. While most records are thought of as having a relationship to enterprise business, not all do. Much recorded information serves to document an event or a critical point in history. Examples of these are birth, death, medical/health and educational records. e-Science, for example, is an area where ILM has become relevant.
In 2004, the Storage Networking Industry Association, on behalf of the information technology (IT) and information storage industries, attempted to assign a new broader definition to Information Lifecycle Management (ILM). The oft-quoted definition that it released that October at the Storage Networking World conference in Orlando, Florida, stated that "ILM the policies, processes, practices, and tools used to align the business value of information with the most appropriate and cost-effective IT infrastructure from the time information is conceived through its final disposition." In this view, information is aligned with business processes through management policies and service levels associated with applications, metadata, information, and data.
Policy
ILM policy consists of the overarching storage and information policies that drive management processes. Policies are dictated by business goals and drivers. Therefore, policies generally tie into a framework of overall IT governance and management; change control processes; requirements for system availability and recovery times; and service level agreements (SLAs).
Operational
Operational aspects of ILM include backup and data protection; disaster recovery, restore, and restart; archiving and long-term retention; data replication; and day-to-day processes and procedures necessary to manage a storage architecture.
Infrastructure
Infrastructure facets of ILM include the logical and physical architectures; the applications dependent upon the storage platforms; security of storage; and data center constraints. Within the application realm, the relationship between applications and the production, test, and development requirements are generally most relevant for ILM.
Functionality
For the purposes of business records, there are five phases identified as being part of the lifecycle continuum along with one exception. These are: Creation and Receipt Distribution Use Maintenance Disposition
Creation and receipt deals with records from their point of origination. This could include their creation by a member of an organization at varying levels or receipt of information from an external source. It includes correspondence, forms, reports, drawings, computer input/output, or other sources.
Distribution is the process of managing the information once it has been created or received. This includes both internal and external distribution, as information that leaves an organization becomes a record of a transaction with others.
Use takes place after information is distributed internally, and can generate business decisions, document further actions, or serve other purposes.