SDDC far away from reality in 2016

Software Defined is one of the many technology buzzwords of 2015.

SDDC or Software Defined Data Centre being the last stage of the concept wherein all technologies like storage, networking, applications etcetera become software defined.

Technology vendors like VMware, Cisco expect enterprises’ datacenters to become SDDC (Software defined data centers) in India. And there are other vendors too who expect the same.

“SDDC compared to SDN and SDS has a long way to go. We can’t say that they will come up in next three years, says Pankaj Prasad, principal research analyst at Gartner.

“We hear VMware and Cisco talking about SDx coming up (they have taken strong positions in SDN), the other hardware vendors will jostle up. The moment they have something tangible to talk about, the end users will be bombarded with what someone can and someone else can do. SDDC is still emerging but it is more of a fight amongst vendors before the maturity of SDDC sets in,” he says.

Vendor success would largely depend on its ability to seamlessly deploy, integrate and service its solution with the existing systems to start off with, as per Gaurav Sharma, Research Manager-Enterprise & IPDS, IDC India.

An important success factor and catalyst towards any vendor’s solution adoption would be the transition of its respective channel and how soon it can evolve towards a software centric view of solution and service delivery. Customer education and enablement would also be an important aspect towards the acceptability and adoption of SDx, says Sharma.

SDx would require careful assessment of one’s needs and migration procedures as per Sharma. “It is a journey and not a fortnightly implementation. There would be an opportunity for both open source and commercial solutions and for the start; it is expected to be a hybrid solution in most of the cases. SDx is constantly being seen as the natural evolution and next step to virtualized and automated (Data center) operations,”he says.

The CIOs too see few hindrances. “SDDC is certainly the future through cloud adoption by the companies. The clear roadblock is the dearth of skilled resources required to make this adoption successful if it were to be undertaken in-house,” says Sharad Jambukar, Head – Information Technology, L&T General Insurance Company.

“Transitioning to the SDDC environment will required flexible architectures, opening up hardware capabilities through virtualizations and open interfaces and enhancing infrastructural automation,” says Arindam Singha Roy, CIO, SPML Infra.

We may not see SDDCs for a long time in India, unless enterprises own huge IT estate and have to upgrade their IT infrastructure, feels Akhilesh Tuteja, Partner and Head, IT Advisory Services, KPMG in India.

While there are advantages such as overall cost and faster provisioning time over a period of time, it could be an expensive proposition for the initial stages, he adds.

It is likely that in 2016, SDDCs still remain more of an aspiration than a reality, states Tuteja, Partner at KPMG in India.

Yogesh Gupta is executive editor at IDG Media. You can reach him at yogesh_gupta@idgindia.com or follow him at @yogsyogi1