Hyper-convergence and Open Networking: A Match Made in Cloudy Heaven
A lot of the early hype around cloud computing focused on grand visions related to there being only 5 or 6 extremely large cloud providers across the globe. While public clouds continue to grow at a breakneck pace, private clouds are also starting to see immense traction, especially in key verticals like financials, SaaS providers, and telecom service providers.
Over time and through extensive trial and error, the marketplace is realizing that there are two key requirements for successfully implementing cloud computing:
- Simplicity: This primarily refers to breaking down silos that have plagued IT departments of all sizes, allowing for a unified framework across compute, storage and networking.
- Infrastructure automation: Ranging from automated provisioning to full lifecycle of infrastructure, implemented in a software defined manner. Often referred to as Infrastructure as Code, or Idempotent IT.
Simplicity and infrastructure automation have been extensively covered by leading IT analysts and, along with application-level paradigms like Hadoop, have often been referenced as the way to achieve the extraordinary scale and success of Web scale IT shops like Google, Facebook and Amazon.
But until now, having the entire set of components and knowing how to assemble and automate them effectively still required open Continue reading