Although nearly every vendor is eager to talk about ILM, it's often difficult to get a clear picture of what they really mean when they say it.

"Each vendor, customer and analyst, they define ILM in their own different way," explained Raj Choudhary, ILM sales development manager, Asia Pacific of HP. "Why? Because organizations define ILM solutions based on their capabilities and what they have."

He added that ILM implementation is a journey that takes a long time and a lot of resources to complete. The complexity in ILM, according to Gartner, is one of the reasons for the low adoption of ILM among enterprises. A poll conducted by the research firm during its presentation on ILM in December 2004 suggested that only six percent of the respondents have already purchased and implemented ILM plans, as compared to the 36 percent of the participants who replied ILM was not only the planning horizon at all.

Gartner's poll results suggested one of the reasons for a low adoption is that ILM adds complexity by bringing more products, management responsibilities and requirements to the IT shop.

Aiming to address the problem, the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) whose members include major vendors like Cisco, EMC, HP, IBM and Sun Microsystems, formed the ILM Initiative (ILMI) in June. The goal of the ILMI is to unify current efforts around ILM in a unified, cohesive approach.