Patent ID: 8484165

Claim:
A non-transitory computer-readable medium containing executable code that causes a computer system to perform a method of ordering media components for a media storage facility from an outside vendor, the method comprising: obtaining information related to historical usage of at least one set of media components; determining an amount of media components contained within the media storage facility, wherein the amount of media components includes: media components that are currently in use, media components that are surplus and have not yet been used by the media storage facility, and media components that have previously been used by the media storage facility but that only contain expired data and have been transferred to a surplus of media components that are allocated to the media storage facility for overwriting, wherein determining the amount of media components includes determining an amount of surplus media components that are currently not in use by the media storage facility; predicting future usage of the at least one set of media components; predicting future surplus of media components based on an end of a lifecycle for information stored on the media components, wherein at the end of the lifecycle for information stored on a particular one of the media components, the particular one of the media components is transitioned to the surplus of media components that are allocated for overwriting; and when the predicted future usage requires an amount of media components greater than the determined amount of surplus media components contained within the media storage facility, automatically ordering additional media components from an outside vendor to satisfy the predicted future usage; and updating a quantity of media components provided by a media component ordering policy based upon the predicted future usage, wherein the predicted future use is based at least in part on calendar-based patterns of previously placed orders for additional media components.