But here’s the punchline: it’s free for Oracle 10g and 9i database customers.
Oracle’s tool provides what’s now called Information Lifecycle Management. Translated, it’s hierarchical storage management for the distributed world. The premise is that you move least used, and least valued data to the cheapest storage media you can find.
Maybe in the past, you might not have been that concerned about archival data, but in a world of SOX, you need to pay more attention to where and how you’re going to archive data. And that means there will be more data to worry about archiving.
A recent study of members of the Independent Oracle User Group found 92% of respondents expecting their database storage needs to increase this year, with 64% saying they expect to spend more on storage.
So, while there are numerous third party ILM tools on the market, Oracle is saying you can now get this for free. It’s part of Oracle’s overall strategy to grow its presence in management tooling that deal with the infrastructure around the database.
Oracle ILM Assistant is now available free to all Oracle Database 9i or 10g Enterprise Edition users.
