Factors to Consider When Choosing Accounts Payable Services Providers.pptx
System Networks Drive the Next Generation of Automated, Dynamic Datacenters
1. WHITE P APER
System Networks Drive the Next Generation of Automated,
Dynamic Datacenters
Sponsored by: IBM
Lucinda Borovick
December 2011
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
www.idc.com
Today's competitive business environment is changing the nature of the datacenter,
driving the need for more flexible, scalable, and cost-effective approaches than ever
before. One way datacenter managers are meeting this need is by adopting cloud-
oriented approaches to computing, which in turn is placing greater demand on the
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system network in terms of speed, flexibility, scalability, cost-efficiency, and support
for technologies such as virtualization.
The datacenter network is in the midst of an evolution from a fixed, data-centric,
client/server topology to an application-driven, dynamic network better suited to the
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needs of cloud computing and Big Data. By incorporating greater flexibility into the
network, datacenters can improve their agility and better respond to business needs
and support changing business requirements. This is driving an explosion in high-end
networking equipment, and IDC expects that by 2015, 10GbE will represent 61% of
datacenter network port shipments.
Global Headquarters: 5 Speen Street Framingham, MA 01701 USA
IDC believes that a converged network infrastructure, combining server and storage
networks onto a unified 10GbE fabric, is the most appropriate technology path to
meet the requirements for today's high-performance datacenter applications. Having
server, storage, and network resources working in concert not only brings benefits in
terms of agility and scalability but also maximizes capital investments by reducing the
need to invest in duplicate hardware.
These networking environments should be standards based and best of breed. This
enables enterprises to pick and choose the best available and most cost-effective
technologies and provides future upgrade paths without locking them into proprietary
offerings.
IBM's System Networking business and portfolio, recently expanded with the
acquisition of BLADE Network Technologies, are designed to address these
datacenter needs in a modular, standards-based, and interoperable approach. By
combining network intelligence with compute and storage systems resources, IBM is
working to deliver a unified fabric networking infrastructure that addresses the needs
of today's virtualized, cloud-based infrastructure in a manner that is scalable, cost-
effective, and easy to manage and that provides the flexibility to allow businesses to
be more innovative and competitive in the market.