2014 will be the year of SDx— software-defined everything —but customers will move with caution. Enterprises and service providers will force clear definitions as they embrace software-defined technologies. IT will be disaggregated or seperated as compute, network, and storage move independently into their respective software-defined categories.
Major advances will be made in software-defined storage (SDS), which previously has been trailing software-defined compute and software-defined network. Software-defined storage will be available as ‘True SDS software’ that can run on any commodity hardware and also as a ‘simple to use’ appliance with software pre-packaged with commodity hardware. With SDS, enterprises will gain the ability to control their operational expenses even in the presence of unconstrained data growth.
Service providers will adopt software-defined technologies to effectively compete with today’s public cloud providers; delivering new cloud services with next-generation storage architectures.
Now to the important part – what does SDE mean to you, the customer?
First, it means that dynamic systems allow you to tune all the components yourself to get the best performance and value. Before SDE, buying new hardware was required in order to scale while many components, including servers, storage, networking, to name a few, did not work very well together. -
Second, SDE allows you to experiment with new architectures. For instance, you can place web servers near users in different countries or regions to keep the data base servers near the company headquarter.
Lastly, SDE eases some of the most prevalent cloud adoption barriers: network performance and security. Customers can tune networks easier and network performance can be matched to workloads, which can be critical for seasonal applications or occasional high network performance.
But mostly, SDE benefits the customer. Workflows, roles, procedures and data center practices are preserved as the familiar interfaces and products are offered in a high performing, secure and flexible cloud environment. This truly is the best of both worlds where cost meets business agility. SDE is the data center practice of tomorrow and the next wave of innovation. Welcome to the world of Software Defined Everything.
