Moving Beyond Information Life Cycle Management

Transcription

1 WHITE PAPER Moving Beyond Information Life Cycle Stephen Widen Product Marketing Manager June 2004

2 Executive Summary Information life cycle management (ILM) is one of the most widely discussed initiatives in the storage industry today. Although its definition varies from vendor to vendor, most agree that ILM involves aligning information, data and storage management with business use in other words, managing data differently at different points in time based on its changing business value. This concept has been embraced to varying degrees by vendors in the information technology (IT) industry, especially by storage vendors. The hoped-for promise of ILM is increased operational efficiencies and corresponding lower costs. This white paper reviews ILM as it is currently understood and outlines the vision of Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) for what ILM will be as it extends beyond a storage-only perspective. It also describes the current intelligent storage management solutions offered under CA s BrightStor brand and presents a road map for solutions moving forward in the context of ILM. The Impact of Growing According to industry analysts, data is growing at a rate of 20 40% annually, and the individuals responsible for storing and protecting that data are being asked to do so with reduced staffing and at lower costs, while increasing service levels. Executives are now personally responsible for ensuring that their organizations approaches to handling data complies with new regulations and mitigates risk. Employees have an increasing need for immediate access to information in order to perform their jobs. Companies often need to share data more effectively both within and outside the organization. There is continual pressure to do more with less and at a faster rate. In an attempt to address these issues, organizations are constantly seeking and trying new solutions to be more efficient and productive. However, the result is often a very complex IT environment that includes multiple hardware and software components that might not work well together. To make information and storage management more effective and responsive, businesses need to align the IT environment with business initiatives and make intelligent decisions that help drive the business forward. The Current Focus of ILM ILM is the process of managing data from its creation to its eventual removal. From a storage perspective, this involves moving the data through different types of storage media (for example, from disk to tape to an offsite vault), enabling organizations to leverage the most cost-effective storage options. Historically, data was often moved from one medium to another based primarily on its age or how frequently it was accessed. The older or less regularly used the data, the more likely it was to be moved to low-cost, low-performance, less-accessible systems. However, this posed problems for organizations that needed immediate access to information that is not often used. For example, medical records might be old or accessed infrequently, but in an emergency they must be instantly available. A more valid way to determine where and how long to store data is based on the value of the data to the business. 2

3 Defining the value of a given piece of data involves many factors. How critical is the information to the operations of the business? How important is it to have immediate access to the data? Must it be retained for a certain period of time due to government regulations? In addition, the value of data changes over time. For example, while an order is being processed, the value of the associated data the product being purchased, the shipping address of the customer, the billing information is high and the data must be stored on a high-performance system that offers the best availability. However, once the order is filled, the value of that data drops and it can be moved to a more cost-effective storage device. Conversely, if the customer later needs warranty support, the value of the data once again rises as employees need access to historical information about the order. As the value of a given piece of data changes over time, it must be handled appropriately in order to minimize the costs associated with storage. By evaluating the business value of data over time, it s possible to create storage policies that can be automated, thereby simplifying storage management, reducing administrative costs and the risks of human error, increasing the efficiency of the organization and providing greater control over the data. Currently, ILM focuses on developing a storage infrastructure in which data can be moved to the most efficient form of storage hardware based on the value of that data at a given point in time. As shown in Figure 1, this involves a number of different areas associated exclusively with storage management and, in some cases, content management. Content HSM Archiving Archiving Mover Protection Information,, Storage Intelligence Figure 1. Today s ILM view Expanding the Scope of ILM While implementing ILM is an important first step in properly protecting and retaining data, truly effective ILM must encompass more than traditional storage management. It must extend to include other disciplines, such as asset management and security, as shown in Figure 2. For example, to leverage a complete enterprise management solution, it s necessary to have an inventory of not only the storage resources available, but also other hardware and infrastructure elements. Asset management offers both an initial assessment and an ongoing understanding of your entire enterprise. Likewise, while providing easy access to information is an important aspect of ILM, it s equally important to control that access, making sure that only authorized individuals can view or retrieve sensitive information. Effective access management provides one of the necessary levels of security. 3

4 Asset Security Work Flow Content HSM Archiving Archiving Predictive Analysis Mover Protection Information,, Storage Intelligence Risk Chargeback Compliance Figure 2. Managing information assets in the future The Road to Comprehensive ILM CA has developed a long-term strategy that addresses not only the ILM needs of today, but provides direction for managing information as an asset to the business in the future. This strategy enables our customers to begin laying their ILM foundations today and build on those foundations at their own pace, with the flexibility to choose the right solutions for their businesses. This strategy reflects what we see as the ILM Maturity Model, as illustrated in Figure 3. There are four levels to the model, with each higher level delivering increased alignment of IT to the needs of the business based on information value and greater degrees of automation. Level 1: Storage and data protection were implemented in years past. They had virtually no automation capabilities and, in most cases, were very labor-intensive and typically reactive in nature. The CA strategy for helping customers implement ILM and more extended solutions over the next few years maps to Levels 2 4 of the ILM Maturity Model and includes deliverables along the way, as shown in Figure 4. Customers can plan for reaching this unified business and IT goal at their own pace, taking advantage, over time, of the solutions and services offered throughout the various levels of the ILM Maturity Model. Level 2: Intelligent Storage encompasses BrightStor intelligent storage management solutions, as well as etrust and Unicenter products and services from CA and our partners, all of which are available today. BrightStor provides a comprehensive offering with integrated storage resource management, storage area network management, and backup and restore solutions. This will give customers the knowledge, understanding and information necessary to make the right decisions for their storage operations and businesses. 4

5 Figure 3. ILM Maturity Model Level 3: Business Content focuses on offering enhanced document and content management, message archiving and hierarchical storage management (HSM). During this phase, we also plan to tighten the integration of the products within the various CA brand families and develop solution packages that are targeted toward specific industries, such as small and medium-sized businesses, health care and financial services. BrightStor Document Manager is available now; other components will be delivered in the near future. Level 4: Unified Business and IT View leverages common services (that is, software components that perform reusable functions across multiple management disciplines), developing a central management database, and providing a single view of all aspects of the enterprise to manage information intelligently, efficiently and securely, and to align these information assets with the goals of the business. Figure 4. CA s Delivery of the ILM Maturity Model 5

6 Intelligent Storage Intelligent storage management is based on a storage strategy that includes a complete, integrated and open storage management infrastructure. Since CA offers a comprehensive portfolio of management software solutions, our approach for this phase can leverage not only storage management solutions, but also integrated security management, infrastructure management and other management disciplines. In addition, since virtually all CA technology is built on open industry standards, we can manage software provided by other vendors, simplifying the management of complex, heterogeneous environments. Intelligent storage management is an ongoing process that entails four steps: Identifying key business processes and information, data, networking and storage assets Classifying those processes and the information, data and storage assets based on their business value Defining storage policies and processes to support business requirements, and implementing the appropriate storage management infrastructure Automating the defined policies and processes The first step involves assessing what procedures and assets you currently have. This typically includes identifying those activities that are critical to your business, the data required and generated by those activities, and the servers and other devices available to store that data. BrightStor SAN Designer can help you both audit your current storage area network (SAN) and rapidly develop the best design for your unique needs. If you need assistance with evaluating your current infrastructure, CA Technology Services offers SAN assessment and optimization services based on industry best practices that can be tailored to your particular environment. Once the identification process is complete, you can then begin to classify what you have that is, evaluate the business value of your processes, data and assets. This includes ascertaining how important particular information is to a given process, how quickly or how often the information needs to be accessed by all members of the organization, as well as how long it needs to be retained to comply with business needs and government regulations. Information is able to be placed on the most cost-effective storage media with the right attributes (such as protection, security, performance and so on) based on your assessment of its value to the business. Figure 5. Intelligent Storage Process 6

7 After you have classified your assets, you can begin to define policies and processes for handling your information assets appropriately, based on their business value. For example, if you determine that monthly sales reports must be immediately available to sales and marketing executives for up to three years in order to monitor and respond to business trends, you can establish a storage policy that supports that goal. Finally, to help streamline operations and reduce administrative costs, you can leverage BrightStor solutions to automatically take action based on your established policies. For example, you can use BrightStor Storage Resource Manager to automatically run BrightStor ARCserve Backup to regularly back up high-value data. The process of identification, classification, definition and automation is not a one-time event, but rather a continual activity. As new business processes are added, new business data is created and must be managed. As the value of business data changes over time, it must be handled appropriately. Storage resources must be regularly optimized or expanded as storage needs increase, as well as monitored for availability and performance. All this requires ongoing evaluation of your storage needs. Throughout each step of this process, it s also important to consider the role that other management technologies play. Security, asset management and other disciplines are critical in ultimately aligning all of IT not just storage with the business. CA can assist you in addressing these needs through our etrust, Unicenter and other solutions. By offering a comprehensive solution, CA enables you to get the most out of all your IT assets. Business Content According to industry analysts, most business information exists in unstructured documents word processing files, spreadsheets, s and so forth and employees spend a great deal of their time simply locating the information they need. Tracking, revising and maintaining business documents is expensive in terms of both employee time and infrastructure overhead. Business content management solutions enable you to efficiently manage the process of business information development. Figure 6. Document management process 7

8 Content management starts when a document is created and continues throughout its entire life cycle, as shown in Figure 6. To address the needs of all these stages, content management solutions typically support indexing (content search), check in/check out, versioning and annotations. CA s recently announced BrightStor Document Manager is part of our overall information and data management strategy. This customizable, web-based application manages electronic documents and other files from inception to archive, providing centralized storage, search facilities, version control, automated work flow, access control and publishing capabilities. As part of this phase, CA also plans to deliver message archiving and HSM capabilities. In addition, integration with other critical IT disciplines, such as security and asset management, will provide users with a more complete, enterprise-wide management view. Unified Business and IT View In this phase, CA will provide an integrated, business-oriented IT view of the entire enterprise in four major areas: operations, storage, security and application life cycle, as shown in Figure 7. This will be achieved through a set of common services and a centralized management database, which will provide a single, integrated view of all enterprise assets. With our all-encompassing management capabilities and intelligence mechanisms, as depicted in Figure 7, CA s solutions will be able to closely align IT with the business and provide the right IT services on-demand. Intelligence Service Service Delivery Life Cycle Security Change, Config. & Analysis, Metadata Modeling & Construction Business Modeling & Requirement Business Portfolio Planning Identity & Access Threat Testing Assets, People, Policies Security Information MDB Networks & Systems Common Services Optimization Availability Applications & bases Financial Administration Operations Job Optimization Desktop & Servers Information Life Cycle Storage Storage Service Support Figure 7. Business-oriented IT 8

9 Conclusion With the exponential growth of business information and data, and the increasing demands being placed on IT organizations, it s more important than ever for companies to develop an information asset strategy that reflects the value of business information and data, and encompasses technologies that extend beyond the traditional focus of storage management. Once this is done, IT organizations will be able to manage information as a valuable asset, and support business processes intelligently and cost-effectively. CA s BrightStor intelligent storage management solutions meet today s need to manage and protect information from the laptop to the data center, from files to databases to applications. With BrightStor solutions, customers can place the right data on the right asset at the right time with the right level of protection and security to support their businesses. The integrated design of BrightStor solutions also allows us to extend their capabilities in the future, making information, data and storage management an integral part of business-focused enterprise management and enabling business-oriented IT through managing on-demand. With more than 28 years of management software experience and expertise, CA is uniquely qualified and positioned to help customers achieve their business goals, now and in the years to come. For more information, visit ca.com/brightstor 2004 Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA). All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. This document is for your informational purposes only. To the extent permitted by applicable law, CA provides this document AS IS without warranty of any kind, including, without limitation, any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. In no event will CA be liable for any loss or damage, direct or indirect, from the use of this document, including, without limitation, lost profits, business interruption, goodwill or lost data, even if CA is expressly advised of such damages. MP