IT pros navigate the software-defined data center market

Software-defined infrastructure promises flexibility and agility in the data center, but many IT pros still struggle with challenges such as cost concerns and implementation issues. The software-defined data center (SDDC) aims to decouple hardware from software and automate networking, compute and storage resources through a centralized software platform. IT can either implement this type of data center in increments by deploying software-defined networking, storage and compute separately, or in one fell swoop. IT pros at Gartner's data center conference this month in Las Vegas said their organizations are interested in SDDC to address changing storage needs.