Business leaders are constantly asking IT departments how the public cloud can provide services that are so much faster, cheaper and more flexible than inhouse solutions. The answer is simple: automation. Future-ready data centers that leverage a software-defined foundation have high levels of automation that control and coordinate every facet of the environment, enabling service delivery that will meet business requirements today and tomorrow. A software-defined data center (SDDC) provides an easy-to-automate infrastructure foundation for delivering IT at the pace of business innovation.