Issue link: https://cp.revolio.com/i/661564
28 | THE DATA CENTER JOURNAL www.datacenterjournal.com sufficiently market aware to connect with different markets such as Santa Clara or elsewhere. storage aWare An overwhelming majority (90%) of respondents indicated that they use cloud storage for their infrastructure-as-a- service. is result is interesting. I see the trend toward cloud storage, but when you think about the edge and multisite aware- ness, you could surmise that storage in the cloud (as it stands today) won't be good enough and that it will most likely need to be more accessible in markets. Perhaps in the SDDC we will see more market-based cloud storage solutions for the edge. Big Data It should go without saying that big data will be part of the "smarter" soware- defined data center. Any time you have geographically separate data centers, you will see performance implications owing to latency as a result of the distance. Hav- ing applications and data spread across multiple markets means that not only will we need information in specific markets, but we must also have the ability to share data between markets. seCurity Security will be part and parcel to everything we do, and rightfully so. e survey found that security it a top concern, with many of the respondents indicating their risk of breaches was their number- one concern. In the soware-defined data center, security must be built into the framework, especially with all the Internet of ings devices coming online. netWorking e second-highest concern identi- fied in the survey is reliability of the net- work connections between data centers. With networking being identified as one of the top factors, it will be interesting to see what the intersection between the soware-defined data center and soware- defined network (SDN) will look like. In any event, having a secure network will be a factor in any soware-defined data center strategy. moDuLar Data Center e data center might just need to expand and be elastic in a similar manner to what we see with IaaS and the ability to burst workloads into the cloud. In the survey, 42% of respondents indicated that just-in-time cabinets are important. is result sounds logical given that bursting to a cloud requires capacity in that cloud. A cloud producer has a finite amount of physical space and will need access to cabi- nets in order to provide the burst ability. hyBriD aWare e data makes a strong enough case that the newer "smarter" data center can manage multiple (perhaps heterogeneous) data centers. Awareness might include on-premise infrastructure, colocation or perhaps cloud data centers—one would assume that this smarter soware-defined data center would be able to integrate a management interface to support such a task. So what does all this data from the survey really mean, and when can we start seeing more SDDCs? For starters, it gives some insight into what data center deci- sion makers think about the future of their facilities. And although we can see the benefits of an SDDC—such as being at the "edge," being multisite aware, being stor- age aware, having built-in security, being network aware, being big-data supportable and having the capability to support the modularity (micro data centers)—we don't know when all of these features will come together. If you look around, however, every- thing is getting "smarter": smartphones, smartwatches and smart cars, and the list is growing rapidly. So why wouldn't this trend apply to data centers as well? Smarter devices are greasing the skids for the SDDC, a smarter data center that does and will support the demands of future compute and application-deployment models such as the Internet of ings, the cloud, platform-as-a-service and soware- as-a-service. Bearing this information in mind, we can be smarter about the vision for tomorrow when we keep a close eye on the trends and try to predict what the future will hold. Although many of these requirements are aspirational, the SDDC can and does offer many features today, such as real-time analysis, reporting and on-demand remote access, and remote vis- ibility into the data center—just as if you were there in person. e key to growth is to have a strong SDDC platform on which to build, as de- vices and infrastructures get smarter. e SDDC vision will provide the roadmap for a smarter interface with all of the moving parts, and the SDDC platform will inte- grate and orchestrate all the "smart data center" devices under development. Not only will we get data, but SDDC will give us the ability to make better decisions. I believe era of the soware-defined data center is upon us, and it's time to em- brace the change. e question is whether your data center provides the services and support to deliver the outcomes your busi- ness demands. n about the author: John Hawkins is VP of Marketing and Communications at vXchnge, a Designed for Performance carrier-neutral colocation service provider dedicated to improving the business performance of its customers. John is an author, speaker, writer, strategist and technologist with over 20 years of consulting experience to Fortune 25–500+ companies. Before vXchnge, he was a senior director for RiverMeadow, a SaaS company in Silicon Valley that provides services to many large cloud providers. John is on Twitter at @ hawkinsjohn.