5 Important Drivers of SDDC

I recently worked with a midsized financial institution whose technology team needed five weeks to deploy a new virtual machine. The delay wasn’t due to a lack of talent or insufficient resources but rather to a cumbersome provisioning process that required 26 separate steps.

Twenty-six steps!

This type of legacy process is a prime candidate for disruption by the software-defined data center — and, indeed, this organization saw drastic improvements after implementing its own SDDC.

Here are five top drivers of the technology:

An SDDC enables cost savings by reducing the need for physical infrastructure and hardware. It also eliminates the need for manual configuration and maintenance of hardware, which reduces labor costs.

That’s not to say that SDDC solutions eliminate physical hardware entirely, but rather that organizations can use virtual tools to perform many of the tasks that previously required high-touch interventions. An SDDC investment does come with upfront expenses, but most organizations save money over time through reduced operational support costs.

I mentioned the bank that previously took more than a month to provision virtual machines. After investing in an SDDC solution, the organization was able to shrink that process down to days, or even hours. The reason? SDDC allows teams to manage infrastructure resources more efficiently and flexibly, leading to better resource utilization and faster time to market. These streamlined processes also prevent IT professionals from introducing mistakes through “fat fingering” and free up staff time for strategic projects.

SDDCs provide automation features that simplify and speed up tasks, such as provisioning, patching and updating. The solutions also enable orchestration of different technologies throughout the data center. In data centers with more manual processes, it’s often difficult for administrators to stay on top of management, and routine tasks like patching are frequently put off in favor of more pressing problems. In an SDDC, routine tasks are automated, leading to a more predictable, better performing and more secure IT environment.

The SDDC is an important part of the hybrid cloud or multicloud journey for many organizations, which typically move resources out of their physical data centers and into the private cloud in hopes of achieving cost savings. Yet, too often, organizations find they’re spending the same amount (or even more) because they still need to pay for the same resources and maintenance. By contrast, an SDDC enables organizations to effectively manage cloud-native applications that reduce resource and management needs.

With artificial intelligence and machine learning tools such as ChatGPT dominating business news headlines, many organizations are eager to incorporate AI, ML and other emerging technologies into their own operations. However, innovative tools such as these require changes to an organization’s business processes. Some organization will adopt entirely new business processes, while others might just adapt existing processes to align with the newer model. Either way, these adjustments are necessary to avoid aligning forward-looking technology with outdated or legacy business processes.

While not all organizations are ready to embed AI and ML into their business processes, these technologies can help nearly any sizable organization in the data center. The AI and ML capabilities of SDDC solutions promote predictive analytics and self-healing, providing a proven, high-value use case for organizations looking to apply the technologies of the future.

Story by Kris Krogstad, a Principal Consultant with the Data Center Transformation Practice inside CDW. He has been with the company for 13 years and has worked as an IT consultant for over 20. While his experience has traditionally been with data center compute technologies (such as VMware and Microsoft), his most recent focus has been on leading teams of engineers and consultants.