There seems to be a new hot term in the IT-buzzword-world. Next to cloud, analytics, automation, AR, IoT and many others, I have stumbled upon a lot of software defined xy’s recently. Examples include amongst others Cisco’s Software Defined Acces (SDA) within their new digital network architecture (DNA), Microsofts Software Defined Storage (SDS) and DellEMC’s Software Defined Data Center (SDDC).
To understand how Software Defined Everything (SDE) is disrupting the IT infrastructure industry, let’s first grab an understanding of what it really is. Software defined means that management and administrative functions of the computing infrastructure are virtualized and can be implemented and delivered through software.
Although the term has recently been used a lot for marketing purposes, the phenomenon itself has been around for a while. Take an example from consumer devices. Originally, to find your way around you would have have to buy a GPS, whereas today, you do not need to buy specific hardware anymore but can simply download a maps app to your phone. This trend became alive by the sheer availability of ubiquitous software platforms, i.e. hardware devices such as phones, tablets and PCs.
In the IT infrastructure industry, we can observe the same trend. Previously, there was no standard interface readily available to deploy software into an enterprise. The only possible approach was by selling the software on a piece of hardware. Now, many standardized interfaces are available in most companies with most of the underlying hardware becoming cheaper and more substitutable (Casado, 2016).
This challenges most of the traditional hardware giants in several ways. As capable software becomes the core value driver, many new start-ups can enter the industry. Developing only the software without the hardware radically decreases the amount of investment needed to get started on building and distributing the product (Casado, 2016).
Further, the industry is moving from on premise software to software as a service. Many incumbents have reacted to the disruption by changing there strategic focus. But one thing is for sure: we will be observing a diversifying infrastructure industry in the years to come.
#softwareDefinedDisruptionOnDemandPlease
If you want to learn more about this topic check out the following video:
https://a16z.com/2016/08/21/infrastructure-trends-future/
Casado, M. (2016). Trends in — and the Future of — Infrastructure – Andreessen Horowitz. A16z.com. Retrieved 15 October 2017, from https://a16z.com/2016/08/21/infrastructure-trends-future/
DNA, N. Software-Defined Access. Cisco. Retrieved 16 October 2017, from https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/enterprise-networks/software-defined-access/index.html
Software-defined Storage—Windows Server 2016 | Microsoft. Microsoft Cloud-Platform – IN (English). Retrieved 16 October 2017, from https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/cloud-platform/software-defined-storage
Software Defined Data Center – EMC Glossary. Emc.com. Retrieved 16 October 2017, from https://www.emc.com/corporate/glossary/software-defined-data-center.htm
