Going Gaga over ILM

The storage market is going to see the next phase of revolution in the form

of Information Lifecycle Management (ILM)–solutions for managing and storing

data. With players like HDS, EMC and StorageTek already out with the strategies

and products to drive the market, HP and Sun are yet to refresh their ILM

offerings. HDS is sharpening its focus on enabling customers to consolidate its

data centers, with the goal of stealing high-end market share from EMC. The

company recently unveiled an ILM strategy wherein it has upgraded its products,

at a time when its competitor EMC is enjoying an upsurge in sales with its

modular mid-range products due in part to its reseller relationship with Dell.

HDS has explained its ILM strategy, something that competitors EMC and HP did

in the last few months. Like them, HDS promises multi-tiered architecture and an

understanding that not all data is the same. EMC’s ILM strategy also got a

shot in the arm with the recent acquisition of Legato, already a strong player

in ILM space. HDS may need to pay more attention to the ILM market. HDS will be

able to compete with EMC in the ILM market by continuing to modify its

offerings. The opportunity still exists particularly since both HP and Sun are

yet to come out with their ILM roadmaps.

Customers who look to StorageTek for its industry-leading automated tape

storage solutions now have more reason to cheer. Fueled by popular demand and

packed with enhancements, its ILM product, T9840C has arrived. With the T9840C,

customers can achieve fast data access compared to competing tape-based

solutions, and at a much lower cost than disk. The aggressiveness among all the

major storage players for ILM shows good signs as far as the storage is

concerned. But an area of concern for these companies could be the adoption and

awareness of ILM especially when enterprises are little bit reluctant on

spending on storage. But if it happens, it could be the next big thing.

Rahul Gupta in Mumbai