Managing long-lived information assets...emerging standards and tools can $ave big $

The digital revolution has enabled rapid advances in product/systems capability and functionality that can only be described as astounding. Corresponding advances in the complexity of systems and even individual components is equally astounding, and occasionally confounding. Add to this the ability to fundamentally change the behavior of software-driven products and/or systems in near real time, and you have rapidly compounding growth in the amount of information that is needed to support today´s products and systems over their long lifespans. Effective management, distribution, and use of this continually growing stockpile of information is becoming a significant effort, and a plethora of tools have been introduced to address various aspects of the information management challenge. While the individual tools may streamline the variety of information creation, storage, change, management, production, and distribution processes, they also have the potential to compound the overall problem...especially in the support of complex, long life cycle products. Major enterprise-level inefficiencies can be introduced if individual information handling systems cannot communicate perfectly with each other. And major disruptions can occur over the life of a product when information handling systems are replaced or upgraded...and legacy data is found to be incompatible with the new system