The critical requirements of the business enterprises for data is its availability and security. The data centers fulfill these business requirements by proper and efficient use of the storage infrastructure. Alongside, there should be a strong information management policy to support infrastructure to the best possible benefits.

Based on predefined business policies, information management (ILM) is a proactive strategy facilitating the IT organisations to manage the data efficiently throughout its lifetime. This facilitates the IT organisation to avail maximum return on investment (ROI) of the storage infrastructure. ILM has five phases as given below.

1. Create

2. Access

3. Migrate

4. Archive

5. Dispose.

1. In a sales order application, the value of information changes from the time the order is placed until the time that the warranty becomes void as shown in above figure.

2. The value of the information is highest when a company receives a new sales order and processes it to deliver the product.

3. After the order fulfillment, the customer or order data need not be available for real-time access. The company can transfer this data to less expensive secondary storage with lower accessibility and availability requirements unless or until a warranty claim or another event triggers its need.

4. After the warranty becomes void, the company can archive or dispose of data to create space for other high-value information.