As businesses become increasingly digital, there is a tendency to think about technology in non-physical terms. IT infrastructure becomes “the cloud.” Servers and storage become “virtual.” Networks become “software-defined.”
The reality, however, is that information technology (IT) always depends on physical infrastructure. Without hardware there is no software. So to lose sight of technology’s physical realities is to jeopardize the wisdom with which we manage its physical underpinnings. And unwise management of those physical underpinnings leads to both higher operational costs and higher operational risks.
In fact, the great irony of virtualization is that it makes the physical realities of IT infrastructure even more important by dramatically increasing density and scale of workloads in the data center—and by dramatically increasing the consequences of physical infrastructure failures.
This white paper examines five key aspects of IT that are inextricably tied to computing’s physical realities, even as that computing becomes more virtualized, software-defined, and cloud-based:
- Technology economics
- Business risk
- Operational scale
- Agility and innovation
- Security and compliance
Download this white paper to learn more about software defined networks for the data center.