Future of the Data Center

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Over the past year, I've been engaged in various discussions with many of my colleagues and friends around the "future of the data center." What does this mean? What technologies, ideas, processes and global architectures will define the ‘futuristic' data center? These questions come up often and answers can vary depending on who you ask and when.

The fact of the matter is today's data centers stand at the epicenter of powerful technological and economic trends. Cloud computing, together with processing, storage, security and software technologies that make it possible, are already straining the capabilities of legacy data center networks. It can be daunting to interconnect a growing number of virtual and physical devices while trying to simplify the network to manage these resources at scale. Management complexity increases exponentially as more devices are added.

The traditional data center has become overly complex, costly and extremely inefficient. Traditional architectures that have stayed unchanged for more than 10 years employ excessive switching tiers, largely to work around low performance and low-density characteristics. Overcoming these obstacles requires a fundamental shift in the way enterprise IT organizations build-out their legacy data center networks.

The era of legacy data center architectures is ending. Just as other areas of the data center have evolved to meet the demands of an Internet-enabled world, the time has come for networks to take a significant leap forward into cloud computing. By rethinking traditional legacy approaches and preparing for the advent of cloud computing, it is possible for IT organizations to build data center networks that offer greater economies of scale, improved application service levels, simpler management and lower costs. IT organizations can take decisive steps today that drive businesses closer to the promise of tomorrow.

I hope by now that you are asking, "Ok, David...how exactly do I do all of this?" As you probably know, Juniper has provided data center networking solutions to leading organizations around the world. We're consistently looking for ways to provide significant benefits to these organizations looking to simplify, consolidate and accelerate performance within their data centers while lowering costs. In fact, you might want to go back to my February post on Project Stratus to catch a glimpse on some of my thoughts pertaining to this area.

Keep and eye on this blog over the coming months. My intent over the next few months is to periodically lay out what steps to take, ideas to ponder, challenges to consider into the equation, and most importantly, what it means to build the "data center of the future." I look forward to sharing this conversation with you here.

Message Edited by David_Yen on 10-20-2009 09:41 AM