Information today comes in a wide variety of types, for example an e-mail message, a photograph, or an order in an Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) System. After you know the type of data and how it is used, you have an understanding of what its evolution and final disposition is likely to be.
One challenge facing each organization is to understand how its data evolves and grows, monitor how its usage changes over time, and decide how long it should survive, while adhering to all the rules and regulations that now apply to that data. Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) is designed to address these issues, with a combination of processes, policies, software, and hardware so that the appropriate technology can be used for each stage in the lifecycle of the data.
This section contains the following topics: