Customer imperatives will remain the same whether the future is near or far. No matter what technology, application or device they are using, customers and businesses still want the same things, opines Rajesh Kaul, regional sales director, Brocade.
Virtualization technology brings numerous benefits to enterprise IT organizations. But there are challenges as well, including increased demand for a reliable, resilient data center network. It’s crucial for IT leaders to take the network into account as they create the business case for data-center virtualization. That case is built on benefits such as reduced capital and operating expenses because organizations need fewer physical servers, making the server infrastructure less costly and easier to manage. With fewer machines, companies also have reduced power, cooling and data-center footprint requirements while improving security.
Virtualization also improves the availability of applications and services, as enterprises can more easily recover virtual machines (VMs) from failure. Ethernet fabrics reduce complexity and costs in a virtual data center, while providing the ultimate in scalability, performance and application mobility.
Virtual Cluster Switching (VCS) provides the solution by delivering the first true Ethernet fabric for the data center. VCS enables organizations to simplify their network architecture while reducing operating expenses. At the same time, VCS offers the ultimate in scalability while reducing complexity and promoting application mobility. With VCS, enterprises will realize increased network performance along with far greater network utilization and resiliency compared to classic Ethernet.
In short, IT leaders should realize the promise of the virtualized data center by bringing its proven data center fabric technology to Ethernet, enabling a superior data-center network. VCS makes it easier for companies to reap more benefits from data-center virtualization and optimize their infrastructures for cloud computing.
The move toward cloud computing models will be another key challenge that CIOs will have to manage through in 2011 and beyond. CIOs today have to manage several areas of tension. IT infrastructure is becoming a commodity, and there is increasing pressure from business units for more technology-driven innovation. At the same time, the business units may soon be able to bypass the IT department and find ways to meet their needs directly in the cloud computing environment, where storage and processing are accessed through the Internet as services.
Cloud computing would lack a serious uptake for another 10 years, except for private clouds within organizations. Until then, it would likely only form a relatively small part of businesses’ setup.
The company’s One architecture enables organizations adopt new technologies and simplify their infrastructure at every point throughout this transition. Rather than dictating a costly rip-and-replace approach, products work with existing network assets to create an integrated solution that’s easy to deploy and manage.
This is the cornerstone of Brocade’s approach to building the next generation of networks – Brocade One – where information, applications and users can be anywhere in the cloud. This approach enables a unified, simple management platform, enables choice for customers and allows businesses to deploy and manage the applications they have today, and be ready for those they don’t even know are coming in the future.