Expect Software Defined Splash at VMWorld

Jim Rapoza

There are sure to be plenty of new technologies and products debuting at next week’s VMWorld conference in San Francisco. But one technology trend that attendees should expect to hear quite a bit of is Software Defined Data Centers.

I can hear the complaints already. Wait Jim, what’s this thing? Is it like Software Defined Networking? I’m just kinda of starting to figure that out and now there’s something new?

Sorry to say it but, yes, it is something new that you’ll need to figure out for your organization’s technology needs and, while it has some elements of SDN, it is also in many ways quite different.

Basically, Software Defined Data Centers (or SDCC) are created by taking all of the new networking and data center technologies of the last several years and combining them to create a new dynamic and flexible data center architecture. So server virtualization, storage virtualization, public private and hybrid cloud and SDN are all mixed together to form a new type of data center.

So in an SDCC, everything is programmable, dynamic, software-based and on-demand. Whatever is needed for a data center can be created on the fly, provisioned on an as needed basis and used wherever and whenever. From servers to storage to the networks they run on, everything becomes software that can be flexibly deployed.

If you’ve read my past work, you’ll know that I’m pretty bullish when it comes to Software Defined Networking. But while I also see a lot of potential for SDCC, businesses need to be aware of the many ways that these will be positioned and potentially limited by vendors.

There’s a lot of leeway for vendors to say that they have an SDCC offering that really only handles a couple of the elements. More concerning, there is quite a bit of potential to create locked infrastructures that only provide SDCC capabilities when a customer uses products from a single vendor.

That would be a major problem as, like SDN, the greatest benefits of SDCC will be found in fully open and fully flexible deployments.

So enjoy VMWorld in San Francisco next week. And get ready for your data center’s software defined future.

Jim Rapoza is Senior Research Analyst at Aberdeen Group.

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Expect Software Defined Splash at VMWorld

Jim Rapoza

There are sure to be plenty of new technologies and products debuting at next week’s VMWorld conference in San Francisco. But one technology trend that attendees should expect to hear quite a bit of is Software Defined Data Centers.

I can hear the complaints already. Wait Jim, what’s this thing? Is it like Software Defined Networking? I’m just kinda of starting to figure that out and now there’s something new?

Sorry to say it but, yes, it is something new that you’ll need to figure out for your organization’s technology needs and, while it has some elements of SDN, it is also in many ways quite different.

Basically, Software Defined Data Centers (or SDCC) are created by taking all of the new networking and data center technologies of the last several years and combining them to create a new dynamic and flexible data center architecture. So server virtualization, storage virtualization, public private and hybrid cloud and SDN are all mixed together to form a new type of data center.

So in an SDCC, everything is programmable, dynamic, software-based and on-demand. Whatever is needed for a data center can be created on the fly, provisioned on an as needed basis and used wherever and whenever. From servers to storage to the networks they run on, everything becomes software that can be flexibly deployed.

If you’ve read my past work, you’ll know that I’m pretty bullish when it comes to Software Defined Networking. But while I also see a lot of potential for SDCC, businesses need to be aware of the many ways that these will be positioned and potentially limited by vendors.

There’s a lot of leeway for vendors to say that they have an SDCC offering that really only handles a couple of the elements. More concerning, there is quite a bit of potential to create locked infrastructures that only provide SDCC capabilities when a customer uses products from a single vendor.

That would be a major problem as, like SDN, the greatest benefits of SDCC will be found in fully open and fully flexible deployments.

So enjoy VMWorld in San Francisco next week. And get ready for your data center’s software defined future.

Jim Rapoza is Senior Research Analyst at Aberdeen Group.

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For fifteen years, observability lived downstream of everything else. Code shipped, something broke, an engineer went to the dashboards. The job was forensic. The pillars we built, such as logs, metrics, and traces, were designed for that role: tell a human what just happened, fast enough that they can make it stop. That role has quietly ended ...

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Pilots are everywhere, stakeholders are seeking results, businesses are pushing for new tools, and IT teams are being asked to make AI secure, reliable, and useful at scale. But as organizations move from testing AI to operationalizing it, many are discovering that the biggest barrier is not the model, the use case, or even the budget. It is the file data foundation within ...

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Fast or cheap? For most of my career in engineering, speed and quality sat on opposite ends of a seesaw. The "OR" in "fast or cheap" was non-negotiable. It was expected that pushing for faster releases meant that something in quality would give way. Tightening quality controls meant the schedule slipped. Every engineering leader I know has lived some version of that tradeoff ... The seesaw is starting to level out ...

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I have been building enterprise software for more than 20 years ... One thing stays true across all of it: You do not find out your foundation is wrong during the crisis. You find out when the debt comes due. For a lot of organizations, that bill is arriving now. New research ... puts hard numbers on something practitioners have been sensing for a while. The telemetry problem isn't coming. It's already here ...

AI is Breaking Enterprise Log Management

The rapid growth of AI workloads is pushing traditional log management approaches to their limits, according to The State of Log Management 2026 report from Dynatrace. Modern logs have become critical to understanding, validating, and securing AI-driven decisions, helping organizations ensure reliability, compliance, and performance at scale. However, the volume and complexity of AI telemetry are overwhelming legacy tools ...

How Edge Intelligence Will Redefine Secure Connectivity

For years, secure connectivity has relied on a familiar pattern: route traffic back to centralized gateways, inspect it, and then allow access. This model worked when applications lived in a handful of data centers and users were largely confined to offices. That model is now under strain. Applications are distributed across clouds, users connect from everywhere, and real-time workloads demand performance that centralized inspection points struggle to deliver. As traffic volumes grow and latency expectations shrink, routing everything through a small number of control points has become both a performance bottleneck and a resilience risk. The future of secure connectivity requires a different approach ...

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