Tech Prediction for 2014: SDx (Software-Defined Everything)

The term software-defined has rapidly become a familiar buzzword.  Customers are growing wary of old/existing products re-branded as software-defined.  They are also very clear that any software-defined product that requires proprietary hardware to run is not in fact software – it’s hardware-defined-software-defined which is very different!

2014 will be the year of SDx— software-defined everything —but customers will move with caution. Enterprises and service providers will force clear definitions as they embrace software-defined technologies.  IT will be disaggregated as compute, network, and storage move independently into their respective software-defined categories.

Major advances will be made in software-defined storage (SDS), which previously has been trailing software-defined compute and software-defined network.  Software-defined storage will be available as ‘True SDS software’ that can run on any commodity hardware and also as a ‘simple to use’ appliance with software pre-packaged with commodity hardware.  With SDS, enterprises will gain the ability to control their operational expenses even in the presence of unconstrained data growth.

Service providers will adopt software-defined technologies to effectively compete with today’s public cloud providers; delivering new cloud services with next-generation storage architectures.

At the other end of the spectrum, some vendors will continue to reposition their older/existing offerings as SDS.

In summary, 2014 will see the IT industry accepting clear software-defined definitions, the emergence of real software-defined products, and IT and service providers moving toward a software-defined world.

More Tech Predictions for 2014

A Battle Cry for Protected Storage by Stephen Manley, Chief Technology Officer, Data Protection & Availability Division

Software-Defined in Two Architectures by Josh Kahn, Senior Vice President, Global Solutions Marketing

Bringing Hadoop to Your Big Data by Bill Richter, Isilon

A Whole New World by CJ Desai, President, Emerging Technologies Division

Targeting the Value Office to Transform IT Business by Rick Devenuti, President, Information Intelligence Group

IT’s Ability to Evolve Quickly by Vic Bhagat, Chief Information Officer

As BYOD Matures, BYOI is Waiting in the Wings by Art Coviello, President, RSA

Service Orientation, Big Data Lakes, & Security Product Rationalization by Tom Roloff, Senior Vice President, Global Services

About the Author: Amitabh Srivastava