Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the Software-Defined Data Center

Transcription

1 Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the Software-Defined Data Center Report Summary An ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES (EMA ) Research Report By Torsten Volk, Research Director, Systems Management & Jim Frey, Vice President of Research, Network Management January 2014 Sponsored by: IT & DATA MANAGEMENT RESEARCH, INDUSTRY ANALYSIS & CONSULTING

2 Table of Contents Executive Summary... 1 Introduction... 1 SDDC Process and Technology Maturity... 2 The Core of the Software-Defined Data Center... 4 SDDC and Traditional Data Center Challenges... 5 IT Silos... 5 Business Pressure... 6 Business Drivers of the SDDC... 7 Investment Priorities for 2014 and Beyond... 8 Professional Services... 9 ROI Expectations Key Criteria When Purchasing Data Center Hardware The SDDC Truly Is All About the Application The Dawn of Software-Defined Storage Networking Addressing the Networking Challenge Cloud Governance Is Key The Importance of Public Cloud Open Standards and the SDDC Workload Portability and Interoperability Infrastructure Abstraction Security A Pervasive Topic across the SDDC Conclusion: The Journey to the SDDC Has Only Just Begun... 22

3 Executive Summary Organizations have long been frustrated with slow delivery of new applications and IT s common lack of ability to optimally operate, manage and update these applications. Public cloud services have benefited greatly as a result, due to the perception that they are faster to deploy and easier to manage. But internal IT must respond as well. The concept of the Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) picked up tremendous traction in 2013 and it is safe to predict that the SDDC will become one of the dominating trends in enterprise IT in At the core of the SDDC is the belief that in order to better serve the business, IT infrastructure internal and external must be controlled centrally and become radically aligned along application and service requirements. Deploying, operating, managing and updating applications in the most cost-effective, secure, agile and policy-compliant manner is the key goal of the SDDC. Business units are exerting a tremendous amount of pressure on the IT department to accelerate this process, requiring IT to obtain new skills, such as programming, and to focus on developing cross-domain expertise. Study respondents identified centralized management across a massively heterogeneous IT infrastructure, repeatable configuration of software and infrastructure for optimal application deployment and orchestration and automation for application deployments across silos as the core priorities on the journey to the SDDC today. Organizations indicated plans to rely on IT vendors for help in the form of professional consulting and implementation services in the areas of legacy infrastructure integration and improved IT alignment with business requirements. OpenStack, by the end of 2014, will be found within approximately half of IT departments within the EMA sample of early adopters. However, until business-critical use cases become more common for OpenStack deployments, EMA is unwilling to declare OpenStack the winner of the IaaS race. In short, 2014 is the year of the SDDC and providing developers and applications owners with what they need to successfully deploy, operate and manage an ever-growing number of enterprise applications. Introduction Enterprise IT has come a long way from a secluded and static cost center to a true enabler of competitive advantages in the marketplace. Today, business users and their developers expect rapid delivery of IT resources, services and applications, in a cost-effective manner. Whether they are located within the corporate data center or in one of today s numerous public cloud offerings depends on security, performance, reliability and cost requirements, as well as the skills and expertise of the corporate IT department. In a perfect world, all resource and service provisioning and ongoing management would happen in a policy-driven fashion, where technical details location, servers, storage, network, middleware are hidden from the business. This perfect world is how Enterprise Management Associates defines the Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) and goes far beyond the simple virtualization of servers, storage and networking. Ultimately, the SDDC requires a change in culture, processes, organizational structure and technology. It is all about how applications can be deployed and constantly updated in the most Deploying, operating, managing and updating applications in the most cost-effective, secure, agile and policy-compliant manner is the key goal of the SDDC. Ultimately, the SDDC requires a change in culture, processes, organizational structure and technology. It is all about how applications can be deployed and constantly updated in the most efficient and effective manner. Page 1

4 efficient and effective manner. This is an ambitious vision that depends on a logic layer that is able to make policy-based application placement and management decisions by integrating with traditional IT disciplines, such as performance management, capacity management and lifecycle management. Once the placement decision is made, orchestration and automation capabilities are needed to provision compute, network and storage resources and the required software in a secure manner. In short, within the SDDC, software placement and optimization decisions are based on business logic, instead of technical provisioning instructions. 1 This EMA research study aims at demystifying and dissecting the SDDC concept from a technical as well as from a process, organizational and cultural perspective. IT executives realize that only when application environments are defined and managed through a more and more centralized set of software tools, can the IT organization be optimally aligned with the business. This paper will investigate how far the SDDC is helping with better aligning IT and business. We need to look at a new business-driven paradigm in enterprise IT. I want my staff resources as virtual as my technology. Technology Architect, Major U.S. Healthcare Provider SDDC Process and Technology Maturity As the SDDC topic explored in this study requires extensive knowledge of cutting-edge technologies and processes, EMA applied strict criteria to ensure sufficient SDDC maturity of all respondents. This was achieved by setting the bar for participation very high, by only including study subjects with four or more SDDC-related technologies or processes in place (see Figure 1). This qualification process resulted in the selection of a set of 235 visionary companies, with extensive experience, skill and expertise regarding obstacles and priorities on their journey to the SDDC. The key assumption is that companies of lower maturity will experience these same obstacles and priorities at a later point, meaning that this study sample allows readers a glance into the future. This qualification process resulted in the selection of a set of 235 visionary companies, with extensive experience, skill and expertise regarding obstacles and priorities on their journey to the SDDC. 1 See part 1 of the EMA series of four blog posts on the baseline definition of the SDDC: Page 2

5 Which of the following technologies, structures or processes does your organization take advantage of? Central management software for physical, virtual and cloud resources Software only storage solution, (IBM Virtual Storage Center, EMC ViPR, DataCore, Atlantis, Virsto, HP StoreVirtual VSA, etc.) Cloud group or task force composed of storage, network and server experts Cross-functional processes to orchestrate provisioning and management of storage, network and server resources Solution for server administrators to provision their own storage volumes Continuous/centralized capacity management for physical, virtual and cloud resources Ability to centrally manage multiple public cloud resources Adoption of multiple hypervisors (Xen, Hyper-V, ESXi, KVM, PowerVM, Oracle, etc.) Policy-based automation of infrastructure for routine adjustments without human intervention 58% 57% 57% 56% 55% 54% 51% 50% 69% Software Defined Networking (virtual overlay network) 48% Software Defined Networking (separated control plane from delivery plane) Multi-virtualization or multi-cloud management solution (ServiceMesh, Enstratius, Convirture, RightScale, vcloud Automation Center, SCALR, etc.) APIs for developers to provision their own app environments (servers, network and storage) Configuration management solutions (Puppet, Opscode Chef, SaltStack, ServiceMesh, etc.) Adoption of object storage (EMC Atmos, AWS S3, SWIFT, Ceph, etc.) 46% 45% 42% 41% 39% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% Figure 1 SDDC technology and process adoption Page 3

6 The Core of the Software-Defined Data Center When talking to enterprise architects it becomes clear that the SDDC should be regarded as a strategic direction that entails a myriad of technical, process, organizational and cultural challenges. What IT organizations really want can be summarized in a quote by an enterprise architect of a major U.S. healthcare provider: We need better control and management capabilities for massively heterogeneous systems that are constantly required to provide business units with the applications and services they need. In other words, IT has to be transformed from a speed bump into a service organization, or to quote the words of a technology architect of a large U.S. insurance firm: What cloud has always been to me is a pool of resources that you use software to manage. The SDDC takes this concept much further by providing a governance framework that is able to provision these resources in a policy-driven and application-centric manner. What cloud has always been to me is a pool of resources that you use software to manage. The SDDC takes this concept much further by providing a governance framework that is able to provision these resources in a policy-driven and application-centric manner. Technology Architect, Large U.S. Insurance Firm What do you believe are the most important aspects of the Software Defined Data Center? Centralized management from a single control point Best-practice, repeatable configurations of software and infrastructure for workload deployment Orchestration and automation to easily deploy applications across silos Operational analytics Easy movement of workloads between external public clouds and internal data center resources Policy driven network provisioning 49% 46% 44% 42% 41% 39% Support for multiple hypervisors 38% Elastic infrastructure for massive scalability 37% Policy driven placement of applications 36% Policy driven storage provisioning 36% Open infrastructure APIs to enable platform choice 34% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% Figure 2 Key elements of the SDDC Page 4

7 SDDC and Traditional Data Center Challenges IT Silos This research has identified traditional data center silos servers, network, storage, applications, security as a key pain point within the SDDC context, leading to security, OPEX and integration concerns (see Figure 3). Large companies experience difficulties caused by silos regarding the deployment of software updates much more than smaller ones. Small companies are suffering from high OPEX and CAPEX as a result of silos significantly more than larger ones. Security concerns and challenges regarding the integration of SDDC technologies with legacy infrastructure are the most important issues caused by IT silos for midsize organizations. What are the key pain points caused by silos (between storage, network, compute, middleware, security, legacy, etc. groups) within your IT department? Security concerns 38% 60% Security concerns Increased operating cost Integrating legacy with new technologies Finding/hiring skilled staff 37% 35% 34% 50% 40% Increased operating cost Integrating legacy with new technologies Finding/hiring skilled staff Lack of centralized control Slow deployment of software updates Slow provisioning of new application environments Diagnostics and troubleshooting Increased capital cost Increased staff cost 34% 33% 32% 32% 30% 29% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 500-2,499 employees 2,500-9,999 employees 10,000 employees or more Lack of centralized control Slow deployment of software updates Slow provisioning of new application environments Diagnostics and troubleshooting Increased capital cost Increased staff cost Figure 3 Key pain points caused by IT silos Page 5

8 Business Pressure Business units put tremendous pressure on traditional IT silos, leading to added responsibilities and skill requirements, the need for more cross domain knowledge and IT groups asking for an increase in staff (see Figure 4). The latter applies more to small businesses, while midsize organizations are more focused on the cross-domain knowledge requirement to counter the breakdown of traditional IT processes under the load of business requests. Only 9% of study respondents do not see an impact of the SDDC on current infrastructure management, proving that the vast majority of companies (91%) are affected by this new set of challenges. How are the increasing number of resource requests coming from business units and their developers affecting traditional IT roles (network admin, storage admin, db admin, app admin, server admin)? Added responsibilities & skills required 44% 60% Added responsibilities & skills required More cross domain knowledge needed 42% 50% More cross domain knowledge needed Increase in staff required 41% 40% Increase in staff required IT operations staff feels threatened by change Traditional processes are breaking down under the load Business units are bypassing IT and utilize public cloud services instead 35% 34% 31% 30% 20% IT operations staff feels threatened by change Traditional processes are breaking down under the load Business units are bypassing IT and utilize public cloud services instead Traditional IT roles stay unchanged Traditional IT roles stay unchanged There is no increase in number of requests coming from business units 3% 26% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 10% 0% 500-2,499 employees 2,500-9,999 employees 10,000 employees or more There is no increase in number of requests coming from business units Figure 4 The impact of business requests on traditional IT roles Page 6

9 Business Drivers of the SDDC From a business perspective, the top reasons for transitioning to the SDDC are increased security, better business alignment of the IT infrastructure and rapid application provisioning (see Figure 5). This shows that the SDDC directly picks up where many private and hybrid cloud implementation projects have left behind a trail of disappointed expectations. Organizations have noticed that the SDDC is not simply a technology challenge, but a comprehensive paradigm shift away from a purely technology-centric approach to enterprise IT, toward truly focusing on delivering business solutions. It is important to note that OPEX savings are near the bottom of the list of business priorities and that only 5% of participants do not see any significant business drivers for the SDDC at all. Organizations have noticed that the SDDC is not simply a technology challenge, but a comprehensive paradigm shift away from a purely technology-centric approach to enterprise IT, toward truly focusing on delivering business solutions. What do you believe are the key business drivers for architecting the data center in a manner that enables developers to request the server, network, storage and security resources they require, from within their code? 60% Increased security 40% Increased security Better business alignment of IT infrastructure More rapid application provisioning Easy movement of applications to the best possible environment Accelerated application lifecycle for faster time to value Central management of application environments across multiple infrastructure silos Simpler and more reliable performance management 40% 37% 34% 34% 31% 29% 50% 40% 30% 20% Better business alignment of IT infrastructure More rapid application provisioning Easy movement of applications to the best possible environment Accelerated application lifecycle for faster time to value Central management of application environments across multiple infrastructure silos Simpler and more reliable performance management Improved resource utilization 29% Improved resource utilization Simpler and more reliable compliance management 26% 10% Simpler and more reliable compliance management Lower OPEX 24% Lower OPEX No compelling business drivers 5% 0% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 500-2,499 employees 2,500-9,999 employees 10,000 employees or more No compelling business drivers Figure 5 Business drivers of the SDDC Page 7

10 Investment Priorities for 2014 and Beyond The three key areas of IT investments for 2014 are very much aligned with the core properties of the SDDC, identified above (see paragraph on The Core of the Software-Defined Data Center ): Capacity Management Multi-Virtualization and Multi-Cloud Management Configuration Management Which of the following technology areas is your organization planning to invest into in 2014? Capacity management tools 47% Multi virtualization and/or cloud management platform Configuration management Centralized management of physical, virtual and cloud resources Infrastructure automation & orchestration Software defined storage Network automation 31% 31% 34% 40% 39% 39% Intelligent resource scheduling Automation of server and application lifecycle management Dynamic application placement solution 24% 26% 26% Other (Please specify) 1% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% Figure 6 Investment Priorities for 2014 Page 8

11 Professional Services When EMA asked organizations where they will need the most professional services help in 2014, the following four areas were mentioned the most often (see Figure 7): Spanning legacy and new technologies Aligning business and IT Private cloud implementation Improved service management What types of external help would aid in overcoming the impact of IT silos? Assistance with spanning legacy and new technologies 39% 60% Assistance with spanning legacy and new technologies Help aligning IT with business requirements 37% 50% Help aligning IT with business requirements Private cloud implementation services Help with improving service management strategy 33% 33% 40% Private cloud implementation services Help with policy based infrastructure automation 31% 30% Help with improving service management strategy Advice regarding what software features are needed Advice regarding application aware networking Advice regarding what organizational changes to make within the IT department Advice regarding application centric storage strategies 28% 28% 26% 24% 20% 10% Help with policy based infrastructure automation Advice regarding what software features are needed Advice regarding application aware networking No external help needed 11% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 0% 500-2,499 employees 2,500-9,999 employees 10,000 employees or more Advice regarding what organizational changes to make within the IT department Figure 7 Professional services requirements in 2014 Page 9

12 ROI Expectations When organizations were asked about the most significant ROI and cost savings potential of SDDC-related technologies, the following disciplines came out on top of the list: Virtual desktops and workspaces Storage virtualization for commodity hardware Operational analytics Which of the following technologies promises the highest ROI/cost savings potential today? Virtual desktops / workspaces 40% Storage virtualization for commodity hardware 34% Operational analytics Multi virtualization and/or multi-cloud management software Infrastructure orchestration and automation Software Defined Networking (SDN) and/or network virtualization Software defined storage 33% 31% 30% 29% 28% Object storage 26% Integrated dev/test environments 25% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% Figure 8 Technologies with the highest attributed ROI and cost savings potential Page 10

13 Key Criteria When Purchasing Data Center Hardware Price-performance ratio and reliability can be found at the top of the list of decision criteria for purchasing data center hardware (see Figure 9), closely followed by ease of integration with existing management solutions and simplicity and ease of ongoing management. Neither of these findings can be described as surprising in a world where business requirements are becoming more and more demanding. Specifically, the ability to easily and reliably manage new SDDC technologies within the existing data center is a critical requirement, as a rip and replace approach to implementing the SDDC is mostly unfeasible. When purchasing data center hardware, which of the following criteria are important? Price/performance Reliability Ease of integration with existing management solutions Simplicity & ease of ongoing management Ease of initial deployment CAPEX Comprehensiveness and usability of APIs OPEX 30% 28% 27% 41% 46% 44% 58% 58% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% Figure 9 Decision criteria for hardware investments The SDDC Truly Is All About the Application It is essential to understand that the SDDC is all about finding the optimal home for enterprise applications, based on cost, performance, security and SLA requirements. This home can be in the public or private cloud, can consist of a set of virtual or physical servers or the application can draw from a heterogeneous collection of compute, networking and storage resources. Once the ideal target environment is located and the application deployed, it is essential to constantly monitor the environment. Based on these monitoring results, the entire environment can be permanently optimized or eventually moved to a different hardware platform. The ultimate goal of the SDDC is to provide a set of software management tools that make the initial setup and ongoing optimization of application environments seamless, without relying on proprietary solutions. These tools need to help organizations address the application-gravity caused by proprietary storage, server, networking and security solutions, which all are contributing to difficulties of moving or even resizing application environments. Security is the top concern within this context (see Figure 10), as an incomplete understanding of storage, network, server and software configuration requirements leads to significant uncertainty when it comes to securing the application. The fact that only about one quarter of organizations are planning to invest in dynamic application placement in 2014 demonstrates that we are still at the very beginning of a multi-year journey to a truly softwaredefined data center. The ultimate goal of the SDDC is to provide a set of software management tools that make the initial setup and ongoing optimization of application environments seamless, without relying on proprietary solutions. Page 11

14 When optimizing application placement (moving or resizing application infrastructure), which technology area presents the greatest challenges? 18% 20% 38% Security Network Servers Storage 24% Figure 10 Areas of concern for optimal application placement The Dawn of Software-Defined Storage Traditionally, storage has been its own separate discipline, without any significant awareness of the applications depending on it. Therefore, organizations regard storage as a tremendous pain point when creating and managing application environments. Specifically, the siloed approach to storage, network and server management often leads to inaccuracies, misunderstandings and errors that often result in project delays. Enterprises are aware of the need to overcome these silos (see Figure 11) in order to more efficiently provision, operate and manage application environments. How important is addressing silos (between storage, network, compute, middleware, security etc. groups) within your IT department for more efficient provisioning, management and operation of application environments? 2% 1% 15% Very Unimportant 34% Unimportant Neither Important nor Unimportant Important Very Important 48% Figure 11 The importance of addressing silos Page 12

15 The concept of Software-Defined Storage (SDS) aims at making storage application-aware and at enabling server administrators, application managers and even developers to request and provision the storage they need in a policy-driven self-service manner. Once provisioned, the storage is monitored and managed within its application context and based on SLAs and performance requirements. When asked about the key properties of SDS, study respondents named a wide variety of characteristics that all evolve around a software-driven approach of delivering application-aware storage in a self-service manner (see Figure 12). This shows that the true value of SDS resides in the ability to abstract enterprise storage features from the underlying hardware layer. Of course, storage hardware still matters, as intelligent management through SDS cannot (fully) replace hardware performance or reliability. When asked about the key properties of SDS, study respondents named a wide variety of characteristics that all evolve around a softwaredriven approach of delivering application-aware storage in a self-service manner What do you believe are the key properties of Software Defined Storage? Provides common data service, high availability, snapshots and deduplication independently of underlying hardware Supports hardware from multiple SAN vendors 39% 38% Is delivered as software, without the need to purchase new hardware 38% Enables policy driven provisioning of storage volumes 38% Supports commodity hardware 36% Centralized management of multi-vendor storage 35% Support of multiple server hypervisors 33% Ability to centrally manage file, block, HDFS and object storage 33% Eliminates gravity of storage 32% None of the above 3% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% Figure 12 Key properties of Software-Defined Storage Page 13

16 Networking High cost of networking was identified by our respondents as the most important overall pain point within the SDDC context. And yet, organizations participating in this research put new networking technologies, such as SDN and network virtualization, and new approaches to managing the network, such as network automation, well down the stack in their list of activities and priorities (see Figures 11 and 14). This may indicate that IT teams are reluctant to take on the risk of introducing new networking and network management technologies, or may simply reflect the relative lack of maturity and industry proof points versus traditional networking and network management approaches. When drilling deeper into specific networking challenges related to SDDC, ensuring network performance, adequately planning network capacity and troubleshooting/monitoring across physical and virtual network infrastructure were the greatest networking-related challenges (see Figure13). When considering networking, what is the greatest challenge in your organization's data center? Ensuring network performance 8% 8% 7% 3% 15% 14% Adequately planning network capacity Troubleshooting/monitoring across physical and virtual networking Integrated provisioning across physical and virtual networking Scalability and extensibility of networking equipment 10% 13% Applying/enforcing application-centric security policies Application aware network provisioning and management 11% 11% Rapid adjustment of network paths when applications are moved Too many layers and too much command line coding Rapid provisioning of VLANs Figure 13 Networking challenges within the SDDC Page 14

17 Addressing the Networking Challenge Addressing the networking challenge requires significant investments in a more application-centric and more automated networking infrastructure. Leveraging the concepts of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and network virtualization is critical in achieving this goal. While only 28% of respondents indicated that they had already fully evaluated or deployed SDN or network virtualization, another 22% are planning evaluations in Software-Defined Networking: SDN is meant to represent new, emerging network architectures that separate the networking delivery (packet forwarding) capabilities from the networking control (path configuration, policy definition) functions. These are technologies that change the nature of the underlying network that supports SDDC, including the physical network devices and elements, via new control protocols such as OpenFlow. Highly relevant here is that SDN controllers are designed to offer northbound APIs, so that they may be connected to crossdomain orchestration and automation functions. Because the technologies for SDN are so new, they are still in the earliest stages of market adoption, and in most organizations have yet to progress beyond the test/trial phase. That said, within the advanced SDDC community sampled for this research, 46% of organizations reported taking advantage of this new technology, led by midsize organizations, who answered in the affirmative at a rate of 53%. Because the technologies for SDN are so new, they are still in the earliest stages of market adoption, and in most organizations have yet to progress beyond the test/trial phase. Network virtualization: Often also referred to (confusingly) as SDN, network virtualization solutions provide abstracted networking functions that exist entirely as a virtual/software overlay to the physical network. Consequently, the underlying physical network may or may not use SDN controller/delivery approaches as described above. In many ways, network virtualization is an evolutionary step from intrahypervisor virtual switching and multi-hypervisor distributed switching, to new use cases. Importantly, virtual network overlays are also programmable, offering APIs that can be connected into orchestration and automation platforms. Page 15

18 Cloud The integration of external applications, infrastructure resources and services with the enterprise software running within the corporate data center is a key challenge. Figure 14 illustrates the fact that the overwhelming majority of organizations view cloud-based IT services IaaS, PaaS, and applications in private or public clouds as the most impactful technology in Interestingly, centralized capacity management for physical, virtual and cloud environments ranks second. This illustrates that we are currently in a transition, where the IT department is taking on the role of a broker of services, instead of having to necessarily provide all of these services through its own resources. In your opinion which technology will have the most significant impact on enterprise IT in 2014? Cloud-based IT services (IaaS, PaaS, and applications in private or public clouds) 7% 6% 5% 4% 3% 46% Centralized capacity management for physical, virtual and cloud environments Converged infrastructure (servers, network, storage and management APIs in one) Infrastructure resources and management based on open standards and open frameworks Automation of operations management tasks 8% Software-defined networking 8% Software-defined storage 13% Application-aware storage (storage automatically provisioned based on application requirements) Application-aware networking (networks automatically provisioned based on application requirements) Figure 14 Technologies with the most significant impact in 2014 Governance Is Key The evolution of the IT department to becoming a service broker requires organizations to build out their own governance frameworks, where end users mostly developers and application owners receive guidance regarding which resources or platform services should or must be used for what purpose. Only a small minority (23%) regards this governance issue as resolved, while most organizations are only now starting to become aware of the implications of providing developers and application owners with more or less comprehensive access to heterogeneous internal and external resources. Only 22% of organizations believe that the importance of private cloud will decrease due to the availability of public alternatives. In 2014, private cloud will remain one of the main application deployment targets, with its very specific mix of cost, security, performance, reliability, agility and elasticity characteristics. Page 16

19 The Importance of Public Cloud As public cloud is seen as offering a more and more important set of infrastructure, platform and software resources, organizations find the ability to move workloads to and from public clouds important, very important or even critical (see Figure 15). Only 10% of enterprises participating in this research do not require this capability today. Once application workloads are no longer tied to a specific set of storage, network and compute infrastructure, they can truly be placed in the best possible target environment. Many IT departments today are working on eliminating workload gravity by planning the abstraction of application environments from specific and proprietary infrastructure components. Open standards play a vital role in this context. Many IT departments today are working on eliminating workload gravity by planning the abstraction of application environments from specific and proprietary infrastructure components. How important is the capability to rapidly move an application from the corporate data center to a public cloud (such as Amazon AWS) and back? 11% 10% 31% 15% Unimportant Slightly important Important Very important Critical 33% Figure 15 The importance of workload portability Page 17

20 Currently, the most significant public cloud challenges are security, performance, cost and compliance (see Figure 16). What are the key challenges when managing the use of public cloud resources? Security 59% Performance Cost Compliance Visibility / transparency Central governance Configuration management Integration with legacy/on-prem infrastructure Integrating management with internal/private cloud resources Software lifecycle management 40% 38% 36% 31% 30% 27% 24% 23% 22% Other (Please specify) No public cloud used 1% 1% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% Figure 16 Key challenges when managing public cloud resources Open Standards and the SDDC Standards for workload portability and interoperability, and for infrastructure abstraction, play an important role for the long-term success of the SDDC. Only when application workloads lose their traditional gravity can they be moved to the location where they can run in the best possible manner. Workload Portability and Interoperability Standards such as TOSCA 2 are required to describe the characteristics of a specific application workload in terms of the required hardware, software, security, monitoring, reliability and performance. Ultimately, developers will include application patterns within their code, which will define the requirements that have to be satisfied in order to run the application in a compliant and cost-effective manner. These same patterns will also help systems management software to automatically and (at some point) autonomically initiate troubleshooting measures; for example, in case of performance deterioration or a security breach. When applications come with their infrastructure, management and monitoring requirements built in, enterprises must rely on standardized infrastructure platforms, such as OpenStack to facilitate dynamic workload placement, by offering the same open APIs for compute, networking, storage, security and basic management components. 2 Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications Page 18

21 Infrastructure Abstraction The core idea behind OpenStack is to create an industry-wide IaaS platform that works with the equipment of all major network, storage and server vendors. IT teams gain the ability to build one central IaaS platform based on their existing, often heterogeneous, data center infrastructure, while vendors can reach the broadest possible prospect universe, without having to write custom drivers for each individual IaaS platform. OpenStack currently benefits from a tremendous amount of momentum in terms of hardware vendor support and end customer interest. This study showed that in 2014, half of respondents organizations are planning to adopt OpenStack (see Figure 17). This does not mean that these organizations will run mainly missioncritical applications on their OpenStack platforms; in fact, the opposite is often the case. However, this tremendous amount of interest has turned the OpenStack platform into a standard that almost no corporate IT department can ignore. This study showed that in 2014, half of respondents organizations are planning to adopt OpenStack. Has your organization adopted or is it planning to adopt OpenStack in its data center? 51% 49% Yes No Figure 17 OpenStack adoption in 2014 Page 19

22 When asked for the key reasons why they had implemented or were in the process of adopting OpenStack, scalability, cost and feature range were the frontrunners. Freedom of choice regarding hardware vendors is the most important argument for evaluating OpenStack for small organizations (50%), but does not play a significant role for larger ones (21%), where features (51%) and cost (44%) dominate (see Figure 18). What were the main reasons for your organization's interest in OpenStack? Scalability Cost Feature range 45% 43% 49% Quality of code base Interoperability and portability of application workloads between OpenStack clouds Comprehensive set of APIs / Provide self-service capabilities to internal customers Prefer open source software Freedom of choice in hardware vendors Adoption of the KVM hypervisor Compatibility with Amazon EC2 Large solution ecosystem support Adopted OpenStack as part of a commercial product 38% 35% 32% 32% 32% 29% 26% 24% 21% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% Figure 18 Key reasons for adopting OpenStack Page 20

23 Security A Pervasive Topic across the SDDC Across the server, network and storage domains, security is commonly seen as the most significant challenge when standing up new application environments (see Figure 19). The fact that these security concerns rank above much discussed topics, such as governance, capacity planning, provisioning speed and application performance demonstrates the degree of uncertainty to be addressed within the context of the SDDC. Only when security becomes part of every element of the standard application provisioning process will security concerns move down on this list of key challenges. For Network, Storage, and Servers, which are the most significant points of concern when provisioning new application environments? Security 51% Management & governance 43% Capacity planning 30% Speed of provisioning 41% Application performance / service levels 35% Consistent configuration 30% Placement location (physical, virtual, cloud) 23% CAPEX 20% Provisioning errors 24% OPEX 23% None of the above 5% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% Network Servers Storage Figure 19 Most significant challenges when provisioning new application environments Page 21

24 Conclusion: The Journey to the SDDC Has Only Just Begun This research would not be complete without clarifying that the SDDC is much more an overall IT strategy than a collection of technologies and processes that can simply be deployed. The fact that the slow manual processes to reconfigure (data center) infrastructure to accommodate change is at number two of organizations most pressing overall IT challenges, demonstrates that the transition to the SDDC is a general priority for IT departments in More than two thirds (70%) of respondents currently have projects aimed at making infrastructure more accessible for developers. The addition of programmable layers to existing infrastructure and the new adoption of natively programmable data center components are popular strategies that are often used in parallel. At the end of the day, it makes sense to let two of the EMA study respondents sum things up: Our goal is to manage a large number of platforms through a single application-driven strategy. There is an incredible amount of hardware sitting on the data center floor and managing this entire infrastructure through more and more centralized software takes religious wars out of IT (for example, between the guys who like IBM versus those who prefer HP). Enterprise Architect, Large U.S. Healthcare Provider IT can also no longer get in the way with stupid regulations and mindless reasons for doing nothing. Business drives the technology; technology does not drive the business. IT Architect, Major U.S. Insurance Firm These two statements summarize the essence of the SDDC in a way that can only come from practitioners. IT departments large and small have realized that they are brokers of infrastructure, platform and application services for business units. The better the IT department serves these business units, the more competitive the entire organization will be in the marketplace. Page 22

25 About Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. Founded in 1996, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) is a leading industry analyst firm that provides deep insight across the full spectrum of IT and data management technologies. EMA analysts leverage a unique combination of practical experience, insight into industry best practices, and in-depth knowledge of current and planned vendor solutions to help its clients achieve their goals. Learn more about EMA research, analysis, and consulting services for enterprise line of business users, IT professionals and IT vendors at or blogs.enterprisemanagement.com. You can also follow EMA on Twitter or Facebook. This report in whole or in part may not be duplicated, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or retransmitted without prior written permission of Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All opinions and estimates herein constitute our judgement as of this date and are subject to change without notice. Product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies. EMA and Enterprise Management Associates are trademarks of Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. in the United States and other countries Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. EMA, ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES, and the mobius symbol are registered trademarks or common-law trademarks of Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. Corporate Headquarters: 1995 North 57th Court, Suite 120 Boulder, CO Phone: Fax: SUMMARY