WHAT’S HOT the analyst
steady transformation as organisations aim to modernise their data protection infrastructure, and seek more integrated and service-oriented approaches. In backup and storage, more broadly, the centre of control will continue to move to the VM admin. Even though there’s no consensus on a definition, expect ‘software-defined storage’ to dominate the marketing narrative. We expect interest to coalesce around open-source- based approaches to storage, both cloudy and traditional.
Molecular clouds can spawn stars, but cloud storage activities are starting to provide abstractions that break dependence on traditional data linkages. They are still in their early stages, but in 2014, the efforts will bloom into better options through activities such as the OpenStack Swift project. It won’t escape the pull of the vast volumes of enterprise data, but it will upset the orbits of some vendors.
Storage networking will see the effects of convergence, as well. Cloud systems that require the flexibility of the converged interconnect will take a larger piece of this segment as deployments grow in size. But this isn’t to say that traditional interconnects are disappearing. The force of efficiency isn’t great enough to overcome data gravity’s pull generated by enterprise SANs. Because of this, Fibre Channel (FC) technologies will see another year in which they won’t die. While growth will be modest, at best, and the ‘Gen 6’ 32G interfaces will be a pipe dream for most, FC will remain the primary vehicle for storage data transport for the enterprise.
Sometimes stupid is smarter The security revelations of the past year may have users clamouring to return to the days of a simpler and less-smart smartphone. What’s the use of being able to do everything on one’s mobile device if all of the wrong people wind up with your data? Data gravity’s effects will have users retreating to habits that protect this valuable commodity. A lack of dumber devices on the market will have users grabbing apps that will lobotomise existing ones, while manufacturers start to rethink product capabilities and protections. But that’s not the only security shift that the New Year will present. The continuing slide of computing work from traditional desktops to mobile devices will mean that the large investment in endpoint protection that’s made today will have to be extended to protections built in to applications and data sources. Anti-malware and configuration management tools will be challenged by the increasing futility of trying to deliver platform security.
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www.dcseurope.info I February 2014
This comes at the same time that security management processes will make a shift from providing answers to asking questions. ‘Does this level of activity make me look insecure?’ The growth of analytics is changing the relationship with security management. The push of efficiency is creating products that digest much more information, but don’t provide hard answers. Knowing that 87% of your Windows desktops are patched is helpful from a process perspective, but doesn’t provide a broader picture of security posture. The year ahead will see administrators presented with the ‘Um, this doesn’t look right. What do you think?’ report. A more consultative interaction can raise the level of sophistication of the information provided, but it also requires that administrators be more actively engaged in security outcomes.
SDN is revealed as an elaborate hoax It will be revealed in the coming year that, contrary to one of SDN’s fundamental assumptions, we don’t have to rebuild networks from the bare metal up. We’ve always had the power to make the needed changes much more incrementally – it’s just that no one believed it could be done. Clicking our ruby console cables together three times would have given us the APIs of which we’d always dreamed, but now that various networking vendors have started to
infrastructure. We will pass the tipping point where initial connectivity needs will be met virtually as part of application orchestration. By year’s end, those without the ability to automate networks will be seen as laggards, rather than the mainstream they are today. That will accompany a need for greater systems management integration, but that level of sophistication will have to wait for another year before widespread adoption. The networking capabilities within cloud services will also advance, but this will be an area where network operator services will still struggle to keep up with this newfound flexibility and will limit inter-data centre and hybrid cloud creativity.
Out of the mists We’ve covered the devices in our hands and the elements of the infrastructure that feeds them. Time to move into the clouds, across interconnects and off to the underpinnings of data centres. in the next. Here are our thoughts on cloudy futures, as well as facilities that are heating up and others that are cooling down.
Enterprise users are increasing consumption of cloud-based resources, but many are leaping without much of a look or even a net. Those who are trudging through a cold winter may look longingly at what some are doing and what others are planning with all of that data centre waste heat.
deliver SDN functionality, there’s no need. After waking from 2013’s dreaming, SDN will truly arrive in 2014. Major networking players will demonstrate a heart and a brain, as well as practical implementations for physical network control. That won’t obviate the need for overlay SDN approaches, but it will tackle some of the issues of scale and scope that have hindered past deployments. OpenFlow options will proliferate to more gear and be suitable to a wider audience.
Virtual networking will be propelled past the limited use it’s received, driven by utility to simplify the deployment of computing
I forgot to turn off the cloud... IT budgets will be blown when someone forgets to shut off the cloud when everyone goes home for the evening. While many organisations are starting to ramp up cloud use, continuing use of poor resource management controls will land more than a couple of organisations in financial hot water in 2014 as their consumption accelerates by accident or design. Remember the telecom bill shocks of previous century? Those who don’t are doomed to repeat them with cloud deployments that are driven by utility forces to make consumption easy. One mangled API call could spin up as many instances as shares were traded by errant programmed trading systems in 2013, without the friendly folks at the SEC to pick up the pieces. Concern about managing costs will lead to service offerings that will give enterprises the dashboard functionality necessary to keep costs and performance visible. Those capabilities will rise out of CDN providers as they look to become the system of record for application and provider performance. Their ability to provide traffic direction will give them the ability to become de facto cloud brokers, but they’ll face stiff competition from platform vendors looking to take on that
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