Compliance drives ILM into SMB market: an interview with Alan Sund of Sony Tape Storage.

ILM is generally thought of as an Enterprise architecture. However, Alan Sund, general manager of Tape Storage Solutions Business in the Component Solutions Business Division of Sony Electronics, Inc., points out that he sees ILM extending to the SMB space--and Sony has products developed for it.

What is your vision of ILM, and where is it going?

Sund: ILM, or DLM (Data Lifecycle Management), is definitely an area of increasing importance to today's enterprise. One of the defining and driving forces behind ILM is the issue of compliance. Depending upon which source you speak with, there are 10,000 to 15,000+ government mandates that impact records retention policies in today's corporate environment--and there is no end in sight, only more and more mandates on the horizon. The key for the enterprise is to determine which mandates actually impact them and how to comply. This is not easy to accomplish, as no one can be an expert in thousands of different regulations that span multiple industries. And what makes this even more difficult to cope with is that these regulations are purposefully technology agnostic.

I see compliance-driven ILM creating three trends in the market. First, within large companies the development towards assigning dedicated resources to deal with information retention. Second, the market moving away from the old HSM theory and toward one based on the value of the information/data being stored and marrying this to technologies that map into the value assigned to the files. And third, the increased need for companies to rely more and more upon solution providers to help them wade through the sea of issues involved with matching technologies and systems to business practices and compliance policies.

What is the current role of tape in ILM?

One of the key benefits that ILM brings to the enterprise is the ability to map different technologies, and their inherent strengths and advantages, to the value of the information being stored. No longer does a company need to adopt a single technology in the hopes this is some sort of panacea, only to find out that in many areas this technology may not be the best fit. There is indeed the need for primary disk solutions, as there are for secondary and perhaps even tertiary disk solutions. But when it comes to true long-term archival, there are clear advantages to tape--especially to tape technologies like Sony's AIT and SAIT that offer WORM capability that has been designed to meet the most stringent requirements.

Tape offers a number of advantages that cannot be matched for this level of storage. First and foremost on a cost-per-GB and scalability basis, I do not see any other technology that can match tape. Furthermore, tape is removable and easily transportable, for safe and convenient off-site storage (which certain laws mandate); and storing and archiving data off site adds a level of security from outside hackers, viruses, etc., unmatched by disk-based systems. Tape tends to have a very long lifecycle, which becomes important when dealing with compliance mandates that may require archiving and access to data 10, 20, 30 or more years from now. And again from a cost perspective, tape does not require constant power, so there are cost savings on an ongoing basis.

Thus, within the ILM environment, we see an evolution towards D2D2T (Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape) becoming the de facto standard.

Will improvements in tape drives and media move tape higher up the food chain?

Tape has always maintained a cost and scalability advantage over other technologies. But now we also see tape achieving very high transfer rates--high enough that many systems cannot push out the data stream fast enough to maximize the available performance of tape. Outside of where very quick random accessibility is required, tape continues to offer a very cost-effective solution within an ILM infrastructure. So it is indeed feasible that we might see tape "move higher up the food chain". But again, there should not be a discussion of disk vs. tape. Instead, the discussion should be around matching up the best fitting and cost-effective technology to the value of the information being managed. From this reference point, tape continues to play an important role.

Does Sony's ILM vision extend beyond the enterprise to SMB? If so, how will Sony get there?

Yes, ILM definitely extends to the SMB space. Although much of the recent compliance related press notoriety has been around large businesses, many of the government mandates for compliance impact SMBs. Many of the firms in vertical markets impacted by compliance mandates are SMBs--for health care, financial services, etc. According to the research firm AMI, the following are just a few examples:

* 843,000 SMBs in the healthcare industry, due to HIPAA 

* 157,000 SMBs in the broader financial services industry, due the Patriot Act 

* 7,400 public companies, about half of which are SMBs, due to Sarbanes-Oxley

Because of this, if the affected SMBs want to manage their files and documents electronically rather than hard copy, ILM is a recommended path. In effect, tailored ILM-based policies and practices offer a relatively inexpensive insurance policy against the potential costs associated with a compliance-related legal process. And regardless of whether a compliance mandate applies to a specific small or medium business, ILM still offers an opportunity to adopt these same policies under a concept of "best practices"--which could then be turned into a positive. As an example, if a company hopes to go public some day, one way to help maximize its value is to demonstrate the ability to manage its business properly via clear audit-ability and reporting which are supported through the proper implementation of ILM.

Sony is able to support the SMBs in a number of ways. First, we were the first company to offer tape drives and libraries that support WORM into the entry-level and mid-range markets. And our hardware and media offerings are among the broadest in the industry--with WORM-capable AIT drives starting in the 50GB range for less than $1,000, and scaling with compatibility up to multiple Petabytes of capacity. Through our partnerships with ISVs, we have ensured that applications that leverage this new capability are available as well. We also work with the leaders in the tape automation market, who offer solutions that address the SMB space. We are also working with a number of partners in the SMB space that address ILM specifically, bringing together cost-competitive D2D2T solutions. Lastly, Sony is very channel-centric in our IT market strategy and aggressively works with and supports our solution provider channel partners.

What will it take to get ILM widely implemented? What are the missing pieces?

First of all, ILM does not have to be an expensive solution for the SMB. Although many solutions exist in the market today that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement, there are also solutions that match an SMB budget starting well under $20,000. And this includes software and hardware that is easy to install, is D2D2T-based (thus mapping well into the theory of mapping different technologies to differently valued information), is scalable, and does not require an IT expert to manage.