Understanding the lifecycle of business information is crucial for managing it well. Key considerations in enterprise information management are: first, associating business value with information; second, appropriately retaining information that is required by law; and third, cost-effectively dealing with vast amount of incoming information. This talk will be an exploration of the dimensions of business value, particularly time and expectedness. System architecture considerations, especially the tradeoff between storage and processing, will be described. Key ideas in system design will be summarized, for addressing the most important aspects of each lifecycle stage.