INDUSTRY

SAND Technology, an innovator in analytic application infrastructure, today announced its Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) strategy for Data Warehousing at the DCI Business Intelligence and Data Warehouse Conference. Most data warehouses today are doing far more than their design ever anticipated. Since the relational warehouse model was developed in the early 1990s, data volumes have soared, creating a "tera-flation" that needs to be controlled. At the same time, the changing business and regulatory climate requires that corporate data be retained for longer periods than ever before. More business users are demanding broader and more complex analytic access to the data. Many observers view the growth of data warehouses as out of control, with organizations struggling to keep up. According to Gartner analyst Raymond Paquet, "Changes in regulatory requirements have made building and managing tiered storage infrastructures a major initiative, particularly within industries that are subject to frequent lawsuits, such as finance and healthcare. These regulations are driving storage growth as well as new, more stringent retrieval time requirements. Thus, technologies related to information lifecycle management (ILM) and data lifecycle management (DLM) comprise the second fastest growing segment of the storage software market." SAND’s ILM approach partitions warehouse data into three tiers -- the Online tier for frequently-used, high-value data that require high-performance resources, the Nearline tier for lesser-used but still active data that can be restored to the online server for analysis, and the Offline tier for historic data that can be accessed and analyzed outside the traditional warehouse. "SAND Technology is introducing the Information Lifecycle Management discipline to Data Warehousing so that IT management can re-focus on the original mission of the warehouse as a responsive source of information for the organization," said Arthur Ritchie, SAND’s Chief Executive Officer. "The challenge facing data warehouse managers today is to continue improving users’ ability to access the data, when and how they need it, while controlling the cost of managing the growing volume and complexity of that data. SAND’s mission is to reconcile these seemingly opposing goals." SAND Technology’s Information Lifecycle Management approach builds on the strength of the existing data warehouse, by freeing it from the need to support too much data and queries that are too complex for its design. Since typically less than 30% of the data in a warehouse is in active use, the inactive data can be more efficiently stored in SAND Searchable Archive, reducing the warehouse footprint and improving its performance. Complex analytics can be hosted on SAND Analytic Server where the ’killer queries’ will run more efficiently, sparing the warehouse from the performance penalty usually associated with them. The result: better levels of service to all classes of users, and reduced overall warehouse size. SAND Technology has documented this strategy in a white paper entitled "Taming the Tera-flation: Information Life Cycle Management for Data Warehousing," now available at the DCI Business Intelligence and Data Warehouse Conference, Booth #105 or online at www.sand.com.