SNW Leftovers

ORLANDO, Fla. Storage’s fall classic is over, but it’s not too late to look at a few issues that flew under the radar at Storage Networking World.

ILM defined? Some companies are turning the term into profits (see Tucci Touts ILM and Services Save StorageTek). Yet the concept remains a moving target. Hence, an ILM spiel usually starts with: “You’ve heard a lot about ILM, but what ILM means is…” and what follows varies by vendor.

So the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Data Management Forum decided to remove the confusion by defining ILM this year at SNW. Here’s what they came up with:

Information Lifecycle Management is comprised of 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. Information is aligned with business requirements through management policies and service levels associated with applications, metadata, and data.

Now, that really helps!

What’s after 4-gig? For years, 10-Gbit/s was considered the heir to 2-Gbit/s Fibre Channel technology. “Then 4-gig happened,” Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD) director of product marketing Derek Granath says. “It fit better because it was backward compatible and was a significantly lower price than 10-gig.”