For over 10 years, IBM has had products that provide content management, data retention management and sophisticated storage management, along with the storage systems to house the data. Today, we are  announcing or previewing enhancements to many of these products, bringing together a whole host of IBM services which provide our customers a comprehensive, open, set of solutions that can be tailored to help address their particular needs. The retention managed data environment is about solving a business
problem. IBM can help our customers solve these kinds of problems by addressing the problem as follows:

1. What records do I need to preserve and for how long? We can help you develop, or review your existing, business processes with respect to records management, and work with you as you build, transform or improve these processes to comply with various regulatory and corporate requirements. Further, we can help define the processes required to manage these records during retention.

2. What software do I need to implement my specific records management requirements? Once you understand your records management needs from a business process perspective, we can help you select and install software which can help implement the electronic management of your corporate business records.

3. What storage do I need to preserve the records during their retention period? We will help you identify potential storage solutions based upon the requirements from steps 1 and 2 above.