Poll: Cloud Driving Data Center Change
The traditional data center will be priced out of the market in the next five years. A healthy mix of growing cloud and SDN deployments is proving to be impetus for industry-wide transformation. Frequent visitors to the Transforming Network Infrastructure Community are well versed in both of these burgeoning technologies, and those the visit frequently also know that we value your opinion when it comes to industry trends.
To that end, the above mentioned industry buzzwords finished as the top two responses to a recent community poll. Nearly 40 percent of respondents singled out the cloud as the technology driving the most change in the data center, with over 30 percent believing SDN is filling the same role.
Let’s take them one at a time. SDN is clearly poised to disrupt the data center industry. The ability to leverage software offers a massive cost savings while simultaneously granting new found flexibility. A recent study from Lightwave noted that by the end of 2015, SDN ‘in-use’ controllers and switches in the data center and enterprise LAN set to nearly reach $1.5 billion. And by 2019, the study projects a valuation of over $12 billion.
Cloud benefits are similar to that of SDN, but on a grander scale the cloud data center is designed for and provides a shared computing resource. With its key differences from the traditional data center being a scalable, virtualized infrastructure that not only creates cost savings but also makes one’s data on-demand.
While I’m not one to shy away from an argument, this time I agree with the readers. There are few things a firm must be today, but among these pivotal characteristics one that trumps them all is scalability. Firms must be flexible; not just in day-to-day operations but in architecture as well. A value add to having a flexible, scalable network is the ability to adapt to changing demand without losing a step.
Much like the United States Marines Corp. harkens to adapt and overcome the data center industry must grab the bull by the horns and conquer the cloud. The forecast for the future is cloudy in the data center.
This isn’t your father’s data center anymore…
Edited by Stefania Viscusi
