january 03

ILM- turning regulatory burden into commercial advantage
Statutory record keeping is nothing new, but legislators and regulators now expect IT to store ever-in reasing amounts of information. Regulators, like customers, expect data to be readily available, and as a result, organisations often view compliance-driven investment as an unwelcome but unavoidable cost of doing business. Such an attitude however can only result in the organisation missing a major strategic business opportunity.

By Paul Hammond , UK Services Director of GlassHouse Technologies.

Imagine an IT or storage manager that has just completed an email , file and database archiving implementation, necessitating 6-18 stressful months to get business buy-in. At this point competing demands for Information Lifecycle, Tiered Storage, Retention, Enterprise Content and Document Records Management products may not be greeted with enthusiasm from the business. IT managers may be tempted to see the storage issue as 'how to eat the elephant' when the 'elephant' simply needs leadership and direction. Unaided however IT cannot bridge the gulf dividing technology and business .

If senior managers can see the bigger picture, they can also see the commercial challenges, but data retention costs rarely factor into the CFO's plans. Information Security, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery priorities all compete for attention with Asset Management, Service Improvement Programs, Cost Reduction and Chargeback initiatives. Struggling to quantify the individual business benefits, managers tend to focus on the overall business driver to evolve and survive. US legislation in these areas is clear and explicit: Comply or face punitive fines and custodial sentences. Perhaps blanket coverage of Sarbanes Oxley has obscured UK prison sentences delivered under the Financial Services Act, involving companies outside the financial services industry. Compliance is not an American, financial or corporate phenomenon, and overspending to determine minimum compliance requirements is a common mistake. The UK has similar principles of legal disclosure and lawyers are waking up to them. Most organisations still keep backup tapes as long-term archives, despite the prohibitive cost of restoring them all and searching through all the data. In countries where public servants gather evidence, businesses are increasingly expected to bear the cost of supervised search and retrieval .

Inaction is not an option, but simply buying more products is not the solution, unless they meet all the storage needs of the enterprise as a whole. If this seems too much to ask of a project, product or vendor then perhaps it is. Projects, products and procurement are all tactical considerations . As Sun Tzu wrote several millennia ago "Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."

Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) of data through creation, access, backup and archive to eventual deletion. The strategic business is now widely recognised when properly planned and implemented. It develops service management best practice to align storage services with business requirements. ILM, within a service provider model, creates an effective business strategy.

There are new dynamics within the force at play that cannot be managed in isolation. Risk management depends on records management. Storage management requires data management. Business governance depend on IT governance. None of these tasks can be performed in isolation. Only a business that can manage its data can manage its costs, risks and customer service.

Customers, regulators and investors expect complete data availability. ILM makes business continuity, backup and retention both effective and inexpensive by separating changed and static data. Of the many tools used, the Data Value Model (DVM) is the most effective way to align the value at risk of data with the cost of storage services throughout its life cycle. ILM is the key enabler for service improvement, cost and risk reduction, information security, documents, records and retention management .

Every business has its own style of cost, risk and service management , but the winning formula is a matter of business strategy. This cannot be dictated by accounting practices, organisational constraints or technology prejudices. However, tactical product selection is often the least critical part of the process. To complete Sun Tzu, "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory."