Software Defined Infrastructure: Why should Enterprises care

The SDx (Software Defined everything) phenomena has started playing a big role in the design, deployment and management of infrastructure. Commercially available SDDC (Software Defined Data Center) technologies are finally here to help the further spread of IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) or Cloud services as it is commonly known. I will not go into the details of SDDC but focus more on what is does and how it helps enterprises. For anyone who wants to learn more about it a simple search will yield good results and this link on SDDC is a good place to start.

The simplest analogy for SDDC could be the aeroplane. When the Wright brothers invented the aeroplane it was mostly built using mechanical and electrical parts and designed, driven and operated using basic concepts of physics. Today the aeroplane uses the same components and is driven by the same science but is almost 100% controlled by software. As a result of which it is more accurate, more efficient and better managed. Think of SDDC as applying similar software to infrastructure. It is the same infrastructure using network components, compute, memory, storage, security, etc. but the difference is now it is controlled and managed using software. 

So why should enterprises care about SDDC? Implementing SDDC reduces infrastructure costs. That is the bottom-line. It reduces costs in implementation because it allows for automating provisioning, configuring and deploying infrastructure. It reduces costs during production operations because it allows software code to drive changes, resolve issues and take proactive actions to keep up the efficiency of the infrastructure.

Think about software code driving consistent network and security configurations, policies and rule-sets across the infrastructure environment. Think of allocating network resources in a dynamic manner using software code. Think about using standardized storage but driving different levels of performance on this storage hardware based on application needs. Think about load balancing an environment dynamically based on business volumes. All these and more are driven by the concepts of SDDC.

So how do enterprises take advantage of SDDC? That is a challenge for most enterprises because there is an existing footprint of infrastructure to contend with. They cannot just uproot everything one day and convert everything to a SDDC model. The ideal way is a phased approach to transform small parts at a time without disrupting the normal running of the business. For instance, enterprises can implement the SDS (Software Defined Storage) as a first step. Data volumes are growing rapidly for most enterprises and transforming storage could give immediate cost savings. Configuring firewalls and load balancers could be next to ensure that consistent security policies are deployed and changes are monitored.

Transforming the data center is a journey to be made in baby steps while keeping the day-to-day business running and unaffected. The enterprise does run the challenge of running two types of infrastructure for a significant period of time which Gartner calls Bimodal IT. But in today's competitive business environment and the need for all enterprises to do more with less, there is no escaping the reality that transformation of data centers and infrastructure is a must.