Obstacles and Priorities
on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center
Report Summary
An ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES® (EMA™) Research Report
By Torsten Volk, Research Director, Systems Management & Jim Frey, Vice President of Research, Network Management
January 2014
Sponsored by:
IT & DATA MANAGEMENT RESEARCH,
INDUSTRY ANALYSIS & CONSULTING
Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
Table of Contents
Executive Summary........................................................................................................................... 1
Introduction...................................................................................................................................... 1
SDDC Process and Technology Maturity.......................................................................................... 2
The Core of the Software-Defined Data Center................................................................................. 4
SDDC and Traditional Data Center Challenges................................................................................ 5
IT Silos......................................................................................................................................... 5
Business Pressure.......................................................................................................................... 6
Business Drivers of the SDDC ......................................................................................................... 7
Investment Priorities for 2014 and Beyond....................................................................................... 8
Professional Services........................................................................................................................... 9
ROI Expectations............................................................................................................................ 10
Key Criteria When Purchasing Data Center Hardware................................................................... 11
The SDDC Truly Is All About the Application................................................................................ 11
The Dawn of Software-Defined Storage........................................................................................... 12
Networking...................................................................................................................................... 14
Addressing the Networking Challenge....................................................................................... 15
Cloud............................................................................................................................................... 16
Governance Is Key..................................................................................................................... 16
The Importance of Public Cloud................................................................................................ 17
Open Standards and the SDDC...................................................................................................... 18
Workload Portability and Interoperability.................................................................................. 18
Infrastructure Abstraction.......................................................................................................... 19
Security – A Pervasive Topic across the SDDC................................................................................ 21
Conclusion: The Journey to the SDDC Has Only Just Begun........................................................ 22
©2014 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
Executive Summary
Organizations have long been frustrated with slow delivery of new applications and IT’s common
lack of ability to optimally operate, manage and update these applications. Public cloud services
have benefited greatly as a result, due to the perception that they are faster to deploy and easier to
manage. But internal IT must respond as well. The concept of the Software-Defined Data Center
(SDDC) picked up tremendous traction in 2013 and it is safe to predict that the SDDC will become
one of the dominating trends in enterprise IT in 2014. At the core of
the SDDC is the belief that in order to better serve the business, IT
Deploying, operating,
infrastructure—internal and external—must be controlled centrally and
managing and updating
become radically aligned along application and service requirements.
Deploying, operating, managing and updating applications in the most
applications in the most
cost-effective, secure, agile and policy-compliant manner is the key goal
cost-effective, secure, agile
of the SDDC. Business units are exerting a tremendous amount of
and policy-compliant manner
pressure on the IT department to accelerate this process, requiring IT
is the key goal of the SDDC.
to obtain new skills, such as “programming,” and to focus on developing
cross-domain expertise.
Study respondents identified “centralized management across a massively heterogeneous IT
infrastructure,” “repeatable configuration of software and infrastructure for optimal application
deployment” and “orchestration and automation for application deployments across silos” as the core
priorities on the journey to the SDDC today. Organizations indicated plans to rely on IT vendors
for help in the form of professional consulting and implementation services in the areas of “legacy
infrastructure integration” and improved “IT alignment with business requirements.”
OpenStack, by the end of 2014, will be found within approximately half of IT departments within the
EMA sample of early adopters. However, until business-critical use cases become more common for
OpenStack deployments, EMA is unwilling to declare OpenStack the winner of the IaaS race.
In short, 2014 is the year of the SDDC and providing developers and applications owners with what
they need to successfully deploy, operate and manage an ever-growing number of enterprise applications.
Introduction
Enterprise IT has come a long way from a secluded and static cost center to a true enabler of
competitive advantages in the marketplace. Today, business users and their developers expect rapid
delivery of IT resources, services and applications, in a cost-effective manner. Whether they are located
within the corporate data center or in one of today’s numerous public
cloud offerings depends on security, performance, reliability and cost
Ultimately, the SDDC
requirements, as well as the skills and expertise of the corporate IT
requires a change in
department. In a perfect world, all resource and service provisioning and
ongoing management would happen in a policy-driven fashion, where
culture, processes,
technical details—location, servers, storage, network, middleware—
organizational structure and
are hidden from the business. This perfect world is how Enterprise
technology. It is all about
Management Associates defines the Software-Defined Data Center
how applications can be
(SDDC) and goes far beyond the simple virtualization of servers, storage
deployed and constantly
and networking. Ultimately, the SDDC requires a change in culture,
updated in the most efficient
processes, organizational structure and technology. It is all about how
and effective manner.
applications can be deployed and constantly updated in the most
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Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
efficient and effective manner. This is an ambitious vision that depends on a “logic layer” that is able to
make policy-based application placement and management decisions by integrating with traditional IT
disciplines, such as performance management, capacity management and lifecycle management. Once
the placement decision is made, orchestration and automation capabilities are needed to provision
compute, network and storage resources and the required software in a secure manner. In short, within
the SDDC, software placement and optimization decisions are based on business logic, instead of
technical provisioning instructions.1
This EMA research study aims at demystifying and dissecting the SDDC concept from a technical as
well as from a process, organizational and cultural perspective. IT executives realize that only when
application environments are defined and managed through a more and more centralized set of software
tools, can the IT organization be optimally aligned with the business. This paper will investigate how
far the SDDC is helping with better aligning IT and business.
“We need to look at a new business-driven paradigm in enterprise
IT. I want my staff resources as virtual as my technology.”
– Technology Architect, Major U.S. Healthcare Provider
SDDC Process and Technology Maturity
As the SDDC topic explored in this study requires extensive knowledge
of cutting-edge technologies and processes, EMA applied strict criteria to
ensure sufficient SDDC maturity of all respondents. This was achieved
by setting the bar for participation very high, by only including study
subjects with four or more SDDC-related technologies or processes in
place (see Figure 1). This qualification process resulted in the selection
of a set of 235 “visionary” companies, with extensive experience, skill
and expertise regarding obstacles and priorities on their journey to the
SDDC. The key assumption is that companies of lower maturity will
experience these same obstacles and priorities at a later point, meaning
that this study sample allows readers a “glance into the future.”
1
Page 2
This qualification process
resulted in the selection
of a set of 235 “visionary”
companies, with extensive
experience, skill and
expertise regarding
obstacles and priorities on
their journey to the SDDC.
See part 1 of the EMA series of four blog posts on the baseline definition of the SDDC:
http://blogs.enterprisemanagement.com/torstenvolk/2012/08/16/softwaredefined-datacenter-part-1-4-basics/
©2014 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
Which of the following technologies, structures or processes does your
organization take advantage of?
Central management software for physical, virtual and
cloud resources
69%
Software only storage solution, (IBM Virtual Storage
Center, EMC ViPR, DataCore, Atlantis, Virsto, HP
StoreVirtual VSA, etc.)
58%
Cloud group or task force composed of storage,
network and server experts
57%
Cross-functional processes to orchestrate provisioning
and management of storage, network and server
resources
57%
Solution for server administrators to provision their own
storage volumes
56%
Continuous/centralized capacity management for
physical, virtual and cloud resources
55%
Ability to centrally manage multiple public cloud
resources
54%
Adoption of multiple hypervisors (Xen, Hyper-V, ESXi,
KVM, PowerVM, Oracle, etc.)
51%
Policy-based automation of infrastructure for routine
adjustments without human intervention
50%
48%
Software Defined Networking (virtual overlay network)
Software Defined Networking (separated control plane
from delivery plane)
46%
Multi-virtualization or multi-cloud management solution
(ServiceMesh, Enstratius, Convirture, RightScale,
vCloud Automation Center, SCALR, etc.)
45%
APIs for developers to provision their own app
environments (servers, network and storage)
42%
Configuration management solutions (Puppet, Opscode
Chef, SaltStack, ServiceMesh, etc.)
41%
Adoption of object storage (EMC Atmos, AWS S3,
SWIFT, Ceph, etc.)
39%
0%
10%
20%
30%
Figure 1 – SDDC technology and process adoption
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40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
The Core of the Software-Defined
Data Center
When talking to enterprise architects it becomes clear that the
SDDC should be regarded as a “strategic direction” that entails a
myriad of technical, process, organizational and cultural challenges.
What IT organizations really want can be summarized in a quote by
an enterprise architect of a major U.S. healthcare provider: “We need
better control and management capabilities for massively heterogeneous
systems that are constantly required to provide business units with the
applications and services they need.” In other words, IT has to be
transformed from a speed bump into a service organization, or to
quote the words of a technology architect of a large U.S. insurance
firm: “What cloud has always been to me is a pool of resources that you
use software to manage. The SDDC takes this concept much further
by providing a governance framework that is able to provision these
resources in a policy-driven and application-centric manner.”
“What cloud has always been to
me is a pool of resources that
you use software to manage.
The SDDC takes this concept
much further by providing a
governance framework that
is able to provision these
resources in a policy-driven and
application-centric manner.”
– Technology Architect,
Large U.S. Insurance Firm
What do you believe are the most important aspects
of the Software Defined Data Center?
49%
Centralized management from a single control point
Best-practice, repeatable configurations of software and
infrastructure for workload deployment
46%
Orchestration and automation to easily deploy
applications across silos
44%
42%
Operational analytics
Easy movement of workloads between external public
clouds and internal data center resources
41%
39%
Policy driven network provisioning
38%
Support for multiple hypervisors
37%
Elastic infrastructure for massive scalability
Policy driven placement of applications
36%
Policy driven storage provisioning
36%
34%
Open infrastructure APIs to enable platform choice
0%
10%
20%
Figure 2 – Key elements of the SDDC
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30%
40%
50%
60%
Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
SDDC and Traditional Data Center Challenges
IT Silos
This research has identified traditional data center silos—servers, network, storage, applications,
security—as a key pain point within the SDDC context, leading to security, OPEX and integration
concerns (see Figure 3). Large companies experience difficulties caused by silos regarding the deployment
of software updates much more than smaller ones. Small companies are suffering from high OPEX
and CAPEX as a result of silos significantly more than larger ones. Security concerns and challenges
regarding the integration of SDDC technologies with legacy infrastructure are the most important
issues caused by IT silos for midsize organizations.
What are the key pain points caused by silos (between storage, network, compute,
middleware, security, legacy, etc. groups) within your IT department?
Security concerns
38%
Increased operating cost
37%
Integrating legacy with new
technologies
60%
Security concerns
50%
Increased operating cost
40%
Integrating legacy with new
technologies
Finding/hiring skilled staff
35%
Finding/hiring skilled staff
34%
Lack of centralized control
34%
Slow deployment of software
updates
Lack of centralized control
30%
Slow deployment of software updates
33%
Slow provisioning of new
application environments
32%
Diagnostics and
troubleshooting
32%
20%
Slow provisioning of new application
environments
Diagnostics and troubleshooting
10%
Increased capital cost
30%
Increased capital cost
0%
10%
20%
30%
Increased staff cost
0%
29%
Increased staff cost
40%
500 - 2,499
employees
2,500 - 9,999
employees
Figure 3 – Key pain points caused by IT silos
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10,000
employees or
more
Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
Business Pressure
Business units put tremendous pressure on traditional IT silos, leading to “added responsibilities and
skill requirements,” the “need for more cross domain knowledge” and IT groups asking for an “increase
in staff” (see Figure 4). The latter applies more to small businesses, while midsize organizations are
more focused on the cross-domain knowledge requirement to counter the breakdown of traditional IT
processes under the load of business requests. Only 9% of study respondents do not see an impact of
the SDDC on current infrastructure management, proving that the vast majority of companies (91%)
are affected by this new set of challenges.
How are the increasing number of resource requests coming from business units and their developers
affecting traditional IT roles (network admin, storage admin, db admin, app admin, server admin)?
60%
Added responsibilities & skills
required
44%
More cross domain
knowledge needed
42%
Increase in staff required
41%
IT operations staff feels
threatened by change
50%
More cross domain knowledge
needed
Increase in staff required
40%
IT operations staff feels threatened by
change
35%
30%
Traditional processes are
breaking down under the
load
Traditional processes are breaking
down under the load
34%
Business units are bypassing IT and
utilize public cloud services instead
20%
Business units are bypassing
IT and utilize public cloud
services instead
31%
Traditional IT roles stay unchanged
Traditional IT roles stay
unchanged
There is no increase in
number of requests coming
from business units
Added responsibilities & skills
required
26%
3%
10%
There is no increase in number of
requests coming from business units
0%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
500 - 2,499
employees
2,500 - 9,999
employees
10,000
employees or
more
Figure 4 – The impact of business requests on traditional IT roles
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Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
Business Drivers of the SDDC
From a business perspective, the top reasons for transitioning to the
SDDC are “increased security,” “better business alignment of the IT
infrastructure” and “rapid application provisioning” (see Figure 5). This
shows that the SDDC directly picks up where many private and hybrid
cloud implementation projects have left behind a trail of disappointed
expectations. Organizations have noticed that the SDDC is not simply
a technology challenge, but a comprehensive paradigm shift away from
a purely technology-centric approach to enterprise IT, toward truly
focusing on delivering business solutions. It is important to note that
“OPEX savings” are near the bottom of the list of business priorities and
that only 5% of participants do not see any significant business drivers
for the SDDC at all.
Organizations have noticed
that the SDDC is not simply
a technology challenge, but
a comprehensive paradigm
shift away from a purely
technology-centric approach
to enterprise IT, toward
truly focusing on delivering
business solutions.
What do you believe are the key business drivers for architecting the data center in a manner that enables
developers to request the server, network, storage and security resources they require, from within their code?
60%
Increased security
40%
Better business alignment of IT
infrastructure
40%
More rapid application
provisioning
Increased security
Better business alignment of IT
infrastructure
50%
37%
Easy movement of applications
to the best possible environment
34%
Accelerated application lifecycle
for faster time to value
34%
Central management of
application environments across
multiple infrastructure silos
40%
Easy movement of applications
to the best possible environment
Accelerated application lifecycle
for faster time to value
30%
31%
Simpler and more reliable
performance management
More rapid application
provisioning
Central management of
application environments across
multiple infrastructure silos
29%
Simpler and more reliable
performance management
20%
29%
Improved resource utilization
Simpler and more reliable
compliance management
Improved resource utilization
26%
Simpler and more reliable
compliance management
10%
24%
Lower OPEX
Lower OPEX
0%
5%
No compelling business drivers
0%
10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
500 - 2,499
employees
2,500 - 9,999
employees
Figure 5 – Business drivers of the SDDC
Page 7
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10,000
employees or
more
No compelling business drivers
Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
Investment Priorities for 2014 and Beyond
The three key areas of IT investments for 2014 are very much aligned with the core properties of the
SDDC, identified above (see paragraph on “The Core of the Software-Defined Data Center”):
• Capacity Management
• Multi-Virtualization and Multi-Cloud Management
• Configuration Management
Which of the following technology areas is your organization
planning to invest into in 2014?
47%
Capacity management tools
40%
Multi virtualization and/or cloud management platform
Configuration management
39%
Centralized management of physical, virtual and cloud
resources
39%
34%
Infrastructure automation & orchestration
Software defined storage
31%
Network automation
31%
Intelligent resource scheduling
26%
Automation of server and application lifecycle
management
26%
24%
Dynamic application placement solution
1%
Other (Please specify)
0%
5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50%
Figure 6 – Investment Priorities for 2014
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Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
Professional Services
When EMA asked organizations where they will need the most professional services help in 2014, the
following four areas were mentioned the most often (see Figure 7):
• Spanning legacy and new technologies
• Aligning business and IT
• Private cloud implementation
• Improved service management
What types of external help would aid in overcoming the impact of IT silos?
Assistance with spanning
legacy and new technologies
Assistance with spanning
legacy and new technologies
50%
Help aligning IT with business
requirements
39%
Help aligning IT with
business requirements
37%
Private cloud implementation
services
33%
Private cloud implementation
services
40%
Help with improving service
management strategy
33%
Help with policy based
infrastructure automation
31%
Advice regarding what
software features are needed
28%
Advice regarding application
aware networking
28%
Advice regarding what
organizational changes to
make within the IT
department
Advice regarding application
centric storage strategies
No external help needed
60%
26%
Help with improving service
management strategy
30%
Help with policy based
infrastructure automation
20%
Advice regarding what
software features are needed
10%
Advice regarding application
aware networking
24%
0%
11%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
500 - 2,499
employees
2,500 - 9,999
employees
10,000
employees or
more
Figure 7 – Professional services requirements in 2014
Page 9
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Advice regarding what
organizational changes to
make within the IT
department
Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
ROI Expectations
When organizations were asked about the most significant ROI and cost savings potential of
SDDC-related technologies, the following disciplines came out on top of the list:
• Virtual desktops and workspaces
• Storage virtualization for commodity hardware
• Operational analytics
Which of the following technologies promises the
highest ROI/cost savings potential today?
40%
Virtual desktops / workspaces
34%
Storage virtualization for commodity hardware
33%
Operational analytics
Multi virtualization and/or multi-cloud management
software
31%
30%
Infrastructure orchestration and automation
Software Defined Networking (SDN) and/or network
virtualization
29%
28%
Software defined storage
26%
Object storage
25%
Integrated dev/test environments
0%
5%
10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45%
Figure 8 – Technologies with the highest attributed ROI and cost savings potential
Page 10
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Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
Key Criteria When Purchasing Data Center Hardware
“Price-performance” ratio and “reliability” can be found at the top of the list of decision criteria for
purchasing data center hardware (see Figure 9), closely followed by “ease of integration with existing
management solutions” and “simplicity and ease of ongoing management.” Neither of these findings
can be described as surprising in a world where business requirements are becoming more and more
demanding. Specifically, the ability to easily and reliably manage new SDDC technologies within the
existing data center is a critical requirement, as a “rip and replace” approach to implementing the
SDDC is mostly unfeasible.
When purchasing data center hardware,
which of the following criteria are important?
58%
Price/performance
58%
Reliability
46%
Ease of integration with existing management solutions
44%
Simplicity & ease of ongoing management
41%
Ease of initial deployment
30%
CAPEX
28%
Comprehensiveness and usability of APIs
27%
OPEX
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
Figure 9 – Decision criteria for hardware investments
The SDDC Truly Is All About the Application
It is essential to understand that the SDDC is all about finding the optimal home for enterprise
applications, based on cost, performance, security and SLA requirements. This home can be in the
public or private cloud, can consist of a set of virtual or physical servers or the application can draw
from a heterogeneous collection of compute, networking and storage resources. Once the ideal target
environment is located and the application deployed, it is essential to
constantly monitor the environment. Based on these monitoring results,
The ultimate goal of the
the entire environment can be permanently optimized or eventually
SDDC is to provide a set of
moved to a different hardware platform. The ultimate goal of the SDDC
is to provide a set of software management tools that make the initial setup
software management tools
and ongoing optimization of application environments seamless, without
that make the initial setup
relying on proprietary solutions. These tools need to help organizations
and ongoing optimization
address the application-gravity caused by proprietary storage, server,
of application environments
networking and security solutions, which all are contributing to
seamless, without relying
difficulties of moving or even resizing application environments. Security
on proprietary solutions.
is the top concern within this context (see Figure 10), as an incomplete
understanding of storage, network, server and software configuration
requirements leads to significant uncertainty when it comes to securing the application. The fact that
only about one quarter of organizations are planning to invest in dynamic application placement in
2014 demonstrates that we are still at the very beginning of a multi-year journey to a truly softwaredefined data center.
Page 11
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Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
When optimizing application placement (moving or resizing
application infrastructure), which technology area presents
the greatest challenges?
18%
38%
Security
Network
Servers
20%
Storage
24%
Figure 10 – Areas of concern for optimal application placement
The Dawn of Software-Defined Storage
Traditionally, storage has been its own separate discipline, without any significant awareness of the
applications depending on it. Therefore, organizations regard storage as a tremendous pain point when
creating and managing application environments. Specifically, the siloed approach to storage, network
and server management often leads to inaccuracies, misunderstandings and errors that often result in
project delays. Enterprises are aware of the need to overcome these silos (see Figure 11) in order to more
efficiently provision, operate and manage application environments.
How important is addressing silos (between storage, network,
compute, middleware, security etc. groups) within your IT
department for more efficient provisioning, management and
operation of application environments?
2%
1%
15%
34%
Very Unimportant
Unimportant
Neither Important nor Unimportant
Important
Very Important
48%
Figure 11 – The importance of addressing silos
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Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
The concept of Software-Defined Storage (SDS) aims at making storage
application-aware and at enabling server administrators, application
managers and even developers to request and provision the storage
they need in a policy-driven self-service manner. Once provisioned,
the storage is monitored and managed within its application context
and based on SLAs and performance requirements. When asked about
the key properties of SDS, study respondents named a wide variety
of characteristics that all evolve around a software-driven approach of
delivering application-aware storage in a self-service manner (see Figure
12). This shows that the true value of SDS resides in the ability to abstract
enterprise storage features from the underlying hardware layer. Of course,
storage hardware still matters, as intelligent management through SDS
cannot (fully) replace hardware performance or reliability.
When asked about the key
properties of SDS, study
respondents named a wide
variety of characteristics that
all evolve around a softwaredriven approach of delivering
application-aware storage
in a self-service manner
What do you believe are the key properties of Software Defined Storage?
Provides common data service, high availability,
snapshots and deduplication independently of
underlying hardware
39%
Supports hardware from multiple SAN vendors
38%
Is delivered as software, without the need to purchase
new hardware
38%
Enables policy driven provisioning of storage volumes
38%
36%
Supports commodity hardware
35%
Centralized management of multi-vendor storage
Support of multiple server hypervisors
33%
Ability to centrally manage file, block, HDFS and object
storage
33%
32%
Eliminates gravity of storage
3%
None of the above
0%
5%
10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45%
Figure 12 – Key properties of Software-Defined Storage
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Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
Networking
“High cost of networking” was identified by our respondents as the most important overall pain point
within the SDDC context. And yet, organizations participating in this research put new networking
technologies, such as SDN and network virtualization, and new approaches to managing the network,
such as network automation, well down the stack in their list of activities and priorities (see Figures
11 and 14). This may indicate that IT teams are reluctant to take on the risk of introducing new
networking and network management technologies, or may simply reflect the relative lack of maturity
and industry proof points versus traditional networking and network management approaches.
When drilling deeper into specific networking challenges related to SDDC, “ensuring network
performance,” “adequately planning network capacity” and “troubleshooting/monitoring across physical
and virtual network infrastructure” were the greatest networking-related challenges (see Figure13).
When considering networking, what is the greatest challenge
in your organization's data center?
Ensuring network performance
7%
Adequately planning network capacity
3%
15%
Troubleshooting/monitoring across physical and
virtual networking
8%
8%
14%
Integrated provisioning across physical and virtual
networking
Scalability and extensibility of networking equipment
Applying/enforcing application-centric security
policies
10%
13%
11%
11%
Application aware network provisioning and
management
Rapid adjustment of network paths when
applications are moved
Too many layers and too much command line coding
Rapid provisioning of VLANs
Figure 13 – Networking challenges within the SDDC
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Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
Addressing the Networking Challenge
Addressing the networking challenge requires significant investments in a more application-centric and
more automated networking infrastructure. Leveraging the concepts of Software-Defined Networking
(SDN) and network virtualization is critical in achieving this goal. While only 28% of respondents
indicated that they had already fully evaluated or deployed SDN or network virtualization, another
22% are planning evaluations in 2014.
Software-Defined Networking: SDN is meant to represent new, emerging network architectures
that separate the networking delivery (packet forwarding) capabilities from the networking control
(path configuration, policy definition) functions. These are technologies that change the nature of
the underlying network that supports SDDC, including the physical
network devices and elements, via new control protocols such as
OpenFlow. Highly relevant here is that SDN controllers are designed
Because the technologies
to offer northbound APIs, so that they may be connected to crossfor SDN are so new, they
domain orchestration and automation functions.
are still in the earliest stages
Because the technologies for SDN are so new, they are still in the earliest
stages of market adoption, and in most organizations have yet to progress
beyond the test/trial phase. That said, within the advanced SDDC
community sampled for this research, 46% of organizations reported
taking advantage of this new technology, led by midsize organizations,
who answered in the affirmative at a rate of 53%.
of market adoption, and in
most organizations have
yet to progress beyond
the test/trial phase.
Network virtualization: Often also referred to (confusingly) as SDN, network virtualization solutions
provide abstracted networking functions that exist entirely as a virtual/software overlay to the physical
network. Consequently, the underlying physical network may or may not use SDN controller/delivery
approaches as described above. In many ways, network virtualization is an evolutionary step from intrahypervisor virtual switching and multi-hypervisor distributed switching, to new use cases. Importantly,
virtual network overlays are also programmable, offering APIs that can be connected into orchestration
and automation platforms.
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©2014 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
Cloud
The integration of external applications, infrastructure resources and services with the enterprise software
running within the corporate data center is a key challenge. Figure 14 illustrates the fact that the
overwhelming majority of organizations view cloud-based IT services—IaaS, PaaS, and applications in
private or public clouds—as the most impactful technology in 2014. Interestingly, “centralized capacity
management for physical, virtual and cloud environments” ranks second. This illustrates that we are
currently in a transition, where the IT department is taking on the role of a broker of services, instead
of having to necessarily provide all of these services through its own resources.
In your opinion which technology will have the most
significant impact on enterprise IT in 2014?
Cloud-based IT services (IaaS, PaaS, and
applications in private or public clouds)
5%
Centralized capacity management for physical,
virtual and cloud environments
4% 3%
Converged infrastructure (servers, network, storage
and management APIs in one)
6%
Infrastructure resources and management based
on open standards and open frameworks
7%
46%
8%
Automation of operations management tasks
Software-defined networking
Software-defined storage
8%
13%
Application-aware storage (storage automatically
provisioned based on application requirements)
Application-aware networking (networks
automatically provisioned based on application
requirements)
Figure 14 – Technologies with the most significant impact in 2014
Governance Is Key
The evolution of the IT department to becoming a service broker requires organizations to build out their
own governance frameworks, where end users—mostly developers and application owners—receive
guidance regarding which resources or platform services should or must be used for what purpose.
Only a small minority (23%) regards this governance issue as resolved, while most organizations are
only now starting to become aware of the implications of providing developers and application owners
with—more or less comprehensive—access to heterogeneous internal and external resources. Only
22% of organizations believe that the importance of private cloud will decrease due to the availability of
public alternatives. In 2014, private cloud will remain one of the main application deployment targets,
with its very specific mix of cost, security, performance, reliability, agility and elasticity characteristics.
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©2014 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
The Importance of Public Cloud
As public cloud is seen as offering a more and more important set of
infrastructure, platform and software resources, organizations find the
ability to move workloads to and from public clouds “important,” “very
important” or even “critical” (see Figure 15). Only 10% of enterprises
participating in this research do not require this capability today. Once
application workloads are no longer tied to a specific set of storage,
network and compute infrastructure, they can truly be placed in the best
possible target environment. Many IT departments today are working on
eliminating workload gravity by planning the abstraction of application
environments from specific and proprietary infrastructure components.
Open standards play a vital role in this context.
Many IT departments today
are working on eliminating
workload gravity by
planning the abstraction of
application environments
from specific and proprietary
infrastructure components.
How important is the capability to rapidly move
an application from the corporate data center to a
public cloud (such as Amazon AWS) and back?
11%
10%
15%
Unimportant
Slightly important
Important
31%
Very important
Critical
33%
Figure 15 – The importance of workload portability
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©2014 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
Currently, the most significant public cloud challenges are “security,” “performance,” “cost” and
“compliance” (see Figure 16).
What are the key challenges when managing the use of public cloud resources?
59%
Security
40%
Performance
38%
Cost
36%
Compliance
31%
Visibility / transparency
30%
Central governance
27%
Configuration management
24%
Integration with legacy/on-prem infrastructure
Integrating management with internal/private cloud
resources
23%
22%
Software lifecycle management
Other (Please specify)
1%
No public cloud used
1%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
Figure 16 – Key challenges when managing public cloud resources
Open Standards and the SDDC
Standards for workload portability and interoperability, and for infrastructure abstraction, play an
important role for the long-term success of the SDDC. Only when application workloads lose their
traditional gravity can they be moved to the location where they can run in the best possible manner.
Workload Portability and Interoperability
Standards such as TOSCA2 are required to describe the characteristics of a specific application workload
in terms of the required hardware, software, security, monitoring, reliability and performance.
Ultimately, developers will include application patterns within their code, which will define the
requirements that have to be satisfied in order to run the application in a compliant and cost-effective
manner. These same patterns will also help systems management software to automatically and (at
some point) autonomically initiate troubleshooting measures; for example, in case of performance
deterioration or a security breach. When applications come with their infrastructure, management and
monitoring requirements built in, enterprises must rely on standardized infrastructure platforms, such
as OpenStack to facilitate dynamic workload placement, by offering the same open APIs for compute,
networking, storage, security and basic management components.
2
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Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications
©2014 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
Infrastructure Abstraction
The core idea behind OpenStack is to create an industry-wide IaaS platform that works with the
equipment of all major network, storage and server vendors. IT teams gain the ability to build one
central IaaS platform based on their existing, often heterogeneous, data center infrastructure, while
vendors can reach the broadest possible prospect universe, without having to write custom drivers
for each individual IaaS platform. OpenStack currently benefits from a
tremendous amount of momentum in terms of hardware vendor support
and end customer interest. This study showed that in 2014, half of
This study showed that in
respondents’ organizations are planning to adopt OpenStack (see Figure
2014, half of respondents’
17). This does not mean that these organizations will run mainly missionorganizations are planning
critical applications on their OpenStack platforms; in fact, the opposite is
to adopt OpenStack.
often the case. However, this tremendous amount of interest has turned
the OpenStack platform into a standard that almost no corporate IT
department can ignore.
Has your organization adopted or is it planning to adopt
OpenStack in its data center?
51%
49%
Figure 17 – OpenStack adoption in 2014
Page 19
©2014 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
Yes
No
Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
When asked for the key reasons why they had implemented or were in the process of adopting
OpenStack, “scalability,” “cost” and “feature range” were the frontrunners. Freedom of choice regarding
hardware vendors is the most important argument for evaluating OpenStack for small organizations
(50%), but does not play a significant role for larger ones (21%), where features (51%) and cost (44%)
dominate (see Figure 18).
What were the main reasons for your organization's interest in OpenStack?
49%
Scalability
45%
Cost
43%
Feature range
38%
Quality of code base
Interoperability and portability of application workloads
between OpenStack clouds
35%
Comprehensive set of APIs / Provide self-service
capabilities to internal customers
32%
Prefer open source software
32%
Freedom of choice in hardware vendors
32%
29%
Adoption of the KVM hypervisor
26%
Compatibility with Amazon EC2
24%
Large solution ecosystem support
21%
Adopted OpenStack as part of a commercial product
0%
10%
20%
Figure 18 – Key reasons for adopting OpenStack
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©2014 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
30%
40%
50%
60%
Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
Security – A Pervasive Topic across the SDDC
Across the server, network and storage domains, security is commonly seen as the most significant
challenge when standing up new application environments (see Figure 19). The fact that these security
concerns rank above much discussed topics, such as governance, capacity planning, provisioning
speed and application performance demonstrates the degree of uncertainty to be addressed within the
context of the SDDC. Only when security becomes part of every element of the standard application
provisioning process will security concerns move down on this list of key challenges.
For Network, Storage, and Servers, which are the most significant points of
concern when provisioning new application environments?
51%
Security
43%
Management & governance
30%
Capacity planning
41%
Speed of provisioning
35%
Application performance / service levels
30%
Consistent configuration
23%
Placement location (physical, virtual, cloud)
20%
CAPEX
24%
Provisioning errors
23%
OPEX
5%
None of the above
0%
Network
10%
Servers
20%
30%
40%
50%
Storage
Figure 19 – Most significant challenges when provisioning new application environments
Page 21
©2014 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
60%
Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the
Software-Defined Data Center (Report Summary)
Conclusion: The Journey to the SDDC Has Only Just Begun
This research would not be complete without clarifying that the SDDC is much more an overall IT
strategy than a collection of technologies and processes that can simply be deployed. The fact that
the “slow manual processes to reconfigure (data center) infrastructure to accommodate change” is at
number two of organizations’ most pressing overall IT challenges, demonstrates that the transition to
the SDDC is a general priority for IT departments in 2014. More than two thirds (70%) of respondents
currently have projects aimed at making infrastructure more accessible for developers. The addition of
programmable layers to existing infrastructure and the new adoption of natively programmable data
center components are popular strategies that are often used in parallel.
At the end of the day, it makes sense to let two of the EMA study respondents sum things up:
“Our goal is to manage a large number of platforms through a single
application-driven strategy. There is an incredible amount of hardware sitting
on the data center floor and managing this entire infrastructure through
more and more centralized software takes religious wars out of IT (for
example, between the guys who like IBM versus those who prefer HP).”
– Enterprise Architect, Large U.S. Healthcare Provider
“IT can also ‘no longer get in the way with stupid regulations
and mindless reasons for doing nothing’. Business drives the
technology; technology does not drive the business.”
– IT Architect, Major U.S. Insurance Firm
These two statements summarize the essence of the SDDC in a way that can only come from
practitioners. IT departments large and small have realized that they are brokers of infrastructure,
platform and application services for business units. The better the IT department serves these business
units, the more competitive the entire organization will be in the marketplace.
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©2014 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
About Enterprise Management Associates, Inc.
Founded in 1996, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) is a leading industry analyst firm that provides deep insight across the full spectrum
of IT and data management technologies. EMA analysts leverage a unique combination of practical experience, insight into industry best
practices, and in-depth knowledge of current and planned vendor solutions to help its clients achieve their goals. Learn more about EMA research,
analysis, and consulting services for enterprise line of business users, IT professionals and IT vendors at www.enterprisemanagement.com or
blogs.enterprisemanagement.com. You can also follow EMA on Twitter or Facebook.
This report in whole or in part may not be duplicated, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or retransmitted without prior written permission
of Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All opinions and estimates herein constitute our judgement as of this date and are subject to change
without notice. Product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies. “EMA” and
“Enterprise Management Associates” are trademarks of Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
©2014 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. EMA™, ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES®, and the
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