Information Life Cycle Management

Information Life Cycle Management  (sometimes abbreviated ILM) is basically a set of strategies for administering storage systems on computing devices.

ILM is the practice of applying certain policies to effective information management. It includes every phase of a "record" from its beginning to its end. And while it is generally applied to information that rises to the classic definition of a record (Records management), it applies to any and all informational assets. During its existence, information can become a record by being identified as documenting a business transaction or as satisfying a business need. In this sense ILM has been part of the overall approach of ECM Enterprise content management.

Oracle 12c is using this ILM with the help of newly introduced features:

1.  Heat Mapping:

http://prafulladeote.blogspot.in/2014/05/heat-map-fine-grained-data-usage.html

2.  Automatic Data Optimization:

http://prafulladeote.blogspot.in/2014/05/automatic-data-optimization-ado.html

Using these above 2 new features, we can use old low cost/speed storage effectively, which will again a part of cost saving. In this a Heat Map will keep a track of the data which is not in used/regularly updated. If the data is not getting updated/modified & is only required in database & can not be purged, ADO will move this data on the low cost storage, making room for new data which is again getting very frequently updated/modified.

Please refer above 2 URLs for more details & practical.