Ivan posted his answers to 3 questions posed by a media agency. I got the same email and perhaps my thoughts might add something to the discussion.
Q. What can enterprises do to ensure that their infrastructure is ready for next-gen networking technology implementations emerging in the next decade?
Hire more people and invest in their development. The next generation of networking is disruptive and replaces existing hardware and software architecture in a major way. Because of this, the next generation of data centre, WAN and network security will require more human infrastructure resources to move through the disruption and implement software orchestration systems.
The current trend of heavy investment in technology while reducing headcount mean that full value is not being extracted from the assets deployed. Conceptually, there is no point in having a factory without a maintenance team to sustain efficient and reliable operation.
Q. What networking protocols do you see as growing in importance in 2015?
The focus is about automating change using APIs, and integration with cloud systems like OpenStack and VMware vRealize. The old network routing protocols have less significance in an SDN world since self-configuration and uncontrolled change is not suitable for accurate and predictable programming.
Q. What role will cloud and virtualization play in the enterprise data center in the next few years?
Private clouds will be a substantial market and continue to grow and evolve. Public clouds are a new choice that will suit some percentage of the market. However, infrastructure orchestration and automation features that are available today in the public cloud are critical to improving the speed and reliability of operations in Enterprise, and particularly in terms of keeping operations costs at the same level as today while service delivery increases.
Cloud & virtualization seem likely to be replaced by “Data Centre Operating Systems” that delivery end-to-end architecture and operational capability from a converged hardware infrastructure. Look at this demo from Mesosphere blog which gave me a glimpse into the future of the data centre.
