Dell recently bolstered its networking portfolio to help enterprises accelerate migration to software-defined 10G cloud and virtualized data centers.
The founding member of the Open Network Foundation and a significant contributor to the software-defined network (SDN) community has also made OpenFlow available for its Force10 Operating System code base. Available for the Dell Z9000 and S4810 data center switches, OpenFlow is a technology enabler for SDN deployments. Dell’s approach to SDN embraces legacy networking environments, greenfield controller-based deployments as well as hypervisor-oriented architectures.
“Dell is trying to participate in open standards and give customers choice,” says Phil Davis, vice president of Enterprise Solutions Group for Dell Commercial Business in Asia Pacific and Japan. “That’s going to delay adoption. My guess is this is a three- or four-year journey.”
SDN adoption is likely to be further slowed by networking vendors guarding their chassis-based, physical appliance business.
Meanwhile, Davis expects cloud computing to continue to be a mainstay of CIOs’ agenda this year as customers seek ways to more effectively manage their IT systems and optimize business environments.
“IT budgets will continue to be tight, at least in the first half,” he says. “Customers will expect short-term ROI. They will look to transform their business, get more into the public cloud or make their private cloud as flexible, agile and cost-efficient as the cloud providers’.”