Originally the term software-defined data center (SDDC) has been introduced by VMware, to further describe the move to a cloud-like IT experience. The term software-defined is an important bit of information. It basically means that every key function in the data center is performed and controlled by software, instead of hardware. This opens a whole new way of operating, maintaining but also innovating in a modern data center.

But how does a so-called SDDC look like, and why is a whole industry pushing so hard towards its adoption? This question might also be a reason why you are reading this book, which is meant to provide a deeper understanding of it and give practical examples and hints how to build and run such a data center. Meanwhile, it will also provide the knowledge of mapping business challenges with IT solutions. This is a practice which becomes more and more important these days.

IT has come a long way from a pure back office, task oriented role in the early days, to a business relevant asset, which can help organizations to compete with their competition. There has been a major shift from a pure infrastructure provider role to a business enablement function. Today, most organizations business is just as good as their internal IT agility and ability to innovate. There are many examples in various markets where a whole business branch was built on IT innovations such as Netflix, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Uber, Airbnb, just to name a few.

However, it is unfair to compare any startup with a traditional organization. A startup has one application to maintain and they have to build up a customer base.

A traditional organization has a wide customer base and many applications to maintain. So they need to adapt their internal IT to become a digital enterprise, with all the flexibility and agility of a startup, but also maintaining the trust and control over their legacy services.

This chapter will cover the following points: