Effectively Moving Customers to the SDDC

The software-defined data center, or SDDC, extends virtualization to all data center resources. The goal is for all elements of the infrastructure to be delivered as a service. So, what does that mean for service providers whose customer are migrating to SDDC?

SDDC success requires certain skills and experience, but it also requires new ways of thinking—especially in terms of how technology supports and drives the business.

Here are some of the areas providers should be keeping on top of in order to best serve their customers:

1. Virtualization

Without a doubt, the No. 1 technology skill needed for the SDDC is virtualization. Virtualization increases the agility and efficiency of compute resources, maximizing productive use and minimizing costs. Providers will need to leverage their virtualization knowledge and experience across a growing number of areas.

2. Provisioning

In the SDDC, virtualization principles are applied to compute, network and storage resources. Providers will need to be able to help customers effectively provision infrastructure resources depending on changing business needs. They won’t have to go it alone, as there are robust tools available that help manage and automate the process.

3. Management

As with provisioning, SDDC management requires a big-picture view of the business and its technology requirements. Providers must provide support to customers in utilizing policy-based data center management software in order to deploy and manage workloads in physical, virtual and cloud environments.

4. Cloud

The SDDC can be delivered via private or public clouds, so providers must be able to help customers determine whether and when to use one or the other, or both. This requires knowledge of company and customer data and regulatory mandates, among many other things.

5. Business

As the data center becomes increasingly automated and efficient, IT pros can spend more time on tasks that directly affect the business’s bottom line. To do this effectively—and to further increase the efficiency of the SDDC itself—IT pros must be able to work with business leaders to determine how technology can best support ongoing projects and how it can be leveraged to drive new projects, moving forward. Service providers can aid customers in bridging the gap between the IT and business departments.

For more information on the Software-Defined Data Center please visit http://www.vmware.com/software-defined-datacenter/index.html.