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Software-defined infrastructure a game-changer

Admire Moyo
By Admire Moyo, ITWeb's news editor.
Johannesburg, 15 May 2015
Software-defined infrastructure brings agility, flexibility and scalability benefits.
Software-defined infrastructure brings agility, flexibility and scalability benefits.

Enterprises and cloud service providers have made huge strides in virtualising core sections of their data centres. As a result, they are now benefiting from new infrastructural efficiencies gained specifically from software enabling their server compute and storage hardware.

That's the view of Martin Walshaw, senior engineer at F5 Networks, who points out the agility and efficiency that organisations have already derived from virtualisation is just the start.

According to Walshaw, most organisations are two-thirds of the way through transforming the data centre. The network is the third and final data centre pillar that needs to be virtualised, he notes.

Gartner notes software-defined networking, storage, data centres and security are maturing.

Walshaw believes that manually configuring the network will soon be a thing of the past as software-defined networking (SDN) gives data centre administrators the tools they need to orchestrate their networking operations and dovetail them with the already abstracted compute and storage elements.

"This exciting move is set to be a game-changer, paving the way for software-defined application services (SDAS), which will bring a new level of network automation, responsiveness and resource flexibility. It will also bring greater agility to the data centre as a whole," says Walshaw.

In essence, he explains, SDN brings the sort of agility, flexibility and scalability benefits that virtualisation brought to server compute and storage.

In addition, software-enabling the network creates a new wave of benefits, such as network-layer agility, flexibility and availability, as well as greater control and automation for application layer 4-7 services.

Bob Plumridge, EMEA chief technology officer at Hitachi Data Systems, says software-defined infrastructure enables business to benefit from simplifying technology through automation, driving insight through better access to information and creating agility through abstraction by making fixed resources flexible.

"It essentially removes the heavy lifting and tedium of infrastructure management through the intelligent programming of software, helping IT staff to focus on the things that really matter."

He explains software-defined infrastructure is fundamentally IT-as-a-service (ITAAS), where intelligent software automates and virtualises an IT environment - storage, networking and security - abstracting it away from hardware and delivering it as a service that creates economies of scale, significant cost reductions and efficiencies for business.

"It helps organisations to simplify IT and free data from traditional hardware and location constraints, making it more accessible for all existing and new analytics-driven workloads. It also improves information access through virtualised, hyper-connected and scale-out platforms that are built to accelerate the journey to ITAAS, through application-led, software-defined infrastructure," Plumridge adds.

According to Malcolm Rabson, MD of Dariel, with more businesses utilising the likes of cloud computing and mobile applications, decision-makers are turning to developers to integrate these and leveraging software-defined applications into organisational structures and processes.

Concluding, Walshaw stresses once data centres have implemented SDN and SDAS alongside their virtualised server and storage infrastructures, they will have the power to react faster to changes in technology, and deliver responsive change.

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