To cut through the cloud of ILM confusion, both Sargeant and Toigo noted it is essential to first understand your data.

"Understanding the information intimately is the challenge for many organizations," said Sargeant. "I don't think a lot of organizations have understood the information as well as they should."

A variety of information is spread across different business units and applications within the enterprise. The IT team should understand not only who the data belongs to, but also its background, like how users want to use this information and the SLA associated with it, he added.

Although the SNIA suggested data classification early on in the ILM roadmap, Sargeant noted it should really be in the first phase instead of the second.

"I'd say the [SNIA's] first phase is consolidation of data because lots of organizations have already consolidated their data," he said. "For those that haven't consolidated their data, this is putting the cart before the horse a little bit."