Brief: The Software-Defined Data Center Is Still A Work In Progress

To accelerate business growth, infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals must understand and ultimately master four key I&O-related trends: 1) continually consolidate and optimize the technology infrastructure; 2) focus on business technology (BT) resiliency and availability; 3) integrate hybrid cloud into the existing portfolio; and 4) simplify and automate via a software-defined data center (SDDC) strategy. This report is a follow-up to Forrester's November 12, 2012, "The Software-Defined Data Center Is The Future Of Infrastructure Architecture" report. It incorporates Forrester's recommendations for I&O professionals responsible for developing, implementing, and procuring the technology infrastructure to support the systems of engagement that companies need to win, serve, and retain increasingly empowered customers. To meet ever rising customer expectations, organizations must ensure that their technology infrastructure is clearly aligned to business strategy. This report highlights how the SDDC will affect enterprises and cloud service providers (CSPs) and what steps you should take to ensure that you are building toward this flexible vision of infrastructure engineering.