Curbing Data GrowthCurbing Data Growth

Motorola Inc. said Monday that it's deploying information-life-cycle-management software to curb the rate of data growth in its operational applications. With the system, which will eventually manage more than 32 terabytes of data throughout the company, Motorola expects to improve application performance and reduce the amount of data-storage disks it has to purchase.

Motorola's Personal Communication Sector division already uses the software, OuterBay Technologies Inc.'s Application Data Management, to define what data generated by its Oracle E-Business manufacturing, inventory-management, and distribution applications needs to be kept in a production database for quick access and what can be moved to more cost-effective data archives.

For example, the system will retain data the applications need for day-to-day operations and archive data that must be stored for regulatory purposes for periods of years, says Bill Brewer, PCS global IT configuration manager.

Motorola PCS's North American operations installed the OuterBay software last month, and, with less data to churn through, the manufacturing and distribution applications are already running faster. "We've already seen, roughly, a 62% to 68% performance improvement in throughput in the applications," Brewer says.

Information moved out of the production database to archive storage doesn't require the data-intensive indexes and other disk-hogging overhead that enterprise-resource-planning applications generate, Brewer says. This alone means that over the next six years, Motorola PCS's disk-storage needs will grow only 10 terabytes, instead of the projected 23 terabytes without the use of OuterBay, he says. That will reduce the amount of storage capacity Motorola has to purchase from vendors such as EMC Corp., although Brewer declined to disclose anticipated cost savings.

Motorola PCS is now installing OuterBay ADM in its operations in Asia, Latin America, and other regions; it expects to complete that work by the end of the first quarter next year. The software is also being installed in other Motorola business units, and Brewer says that should be complete by the end of 2005. By then, he says, the system is expected to be managing 32 terabytes of data companywide.