ILM is a concept that encompasses the discovery, classification, analysis, and maintenance of data, across the entire period of its useful life. It adds structure and context to data, marking the transition from information to data. ILM is a part of the larger concept of Business Continuity Planning, but has become increasingly prominent in the storage arena in recent years thanks to several factors, including advancements in data storage management techniques and the technology that underpins it, and evolution in the storage environment, including:

• Coexistence of Fibre Channel and iSCSI (IP-Storage) in the data center
• SAS and SATA storage coexisting in storage systems
• Storage consolidation practices, for reducing the use of solitary "islands of data" in direct attached storage (DAS)
• Regulatory requirements for data archiving and recall (SOX, etc.)