THE STATE OF THE

VIRTUALIZED
DATA CENTER
Business trends and perspectives on
the deployment and implementation of
network virtualization technologies

TOPICS

Business Trends

Software-Defined Networking and Virtualization

Virtualization and Simplified Architecture

Business Continuity

Security

Management

BUSINESS TRENDS

State of the Network Study conducted by Network World

in October 2012

Computerworlds 2013 State of the Enterprise Survey

State of the Network Study conducted by Network World in

October 2013 - commissioned by Juniper Networks

BUSINESS TRENDS
Importance of infrastructure technologies for creating a competitive advantage

57%

56%

IT and network
services management

Virtualization

BUSINESS TRENDS
34% of IT professionals are ready or planning to roll out desktop, storage
or network virtualization
New to us 4%
Investigating

17%

Ready to rollout

18%

Planning to rollout in next 1-3 years

16%

Fully deployed

30%

Not on our radar

15%

BUSINESS TRENDS

Virtualization is dependent
on the network, and the
network is incredibly
complex.

At least half of IT leaders said network complexity is

holding back virtualization for networks, storage,
applications and servers

SOFTWARE-DEFINED NETWORKING AND

VIRTUALIZATION
More than half the respondents will evaluate software-defined networks (SDN)
within the next two years to help automate and simplify network operations

In the process of
evaluating

18%

Will evaluate in the next

12 months

16%

Will evaluate 12 24
months from now

18%

52%

SOFTWARE-DEFINED NETWORKING AND

VIRTUALIZATION
Facilitates virtualized networks by abstracting lower-level functionality

Decouples the control plane from the data plane

Enables direct programmatic control of the network
Management and operation of the network is handled and automated in a centralized
controller
Provides network admins more granular control
Network designers must consider entire infrastructure when creating workloads
Controller

SOFTWARE-DEFINED NETWORKING AND

VIRTUALIZATION

Nearly half of respondents have or expect to run into skill gaps when deploying SDN
They also worry about lack of proven ROI

IT skill gaps

49%

Unsure of ROI/ immature technology

48%

Integrating with current technology

43%

Staff resource constraints

39%

Cultural barriers within IT

26%

Business disruption/
downtime during transition

24%

SOFTWARE-DEFINED NETWORKING AND

VIRTUALIZATION
Benefits of implementing SDN

Increased network efficiency

Improved IT services delivery
Lower operating costs due to centralized network management
Reduced capital expenditures
Less dependence on proprietary hardware, dedicated appliances
and application-specific devices

10

VIRTUALIZATION AND SIMPLIFIED ARCHITECTURE

Nearly 70% of organizations with more than 1,000 employees have plans to
simplify the IT structure to accelerate virtualization and cloud
One in five are creating new IT teams to redesign the network

Consolidating/merging IT teams

37%

Creating new team dedicated to

re-architecting network

20%

Creating other new IT teams

7%

Other

3%

No changes planned to IT structure

51%

11

VIRTUALIZATION AND SIMPLIFIED ARCHITECTURE

More than half are planning to change or upgrade the network to increase
support for virtualization

Planning significant changes

17%

Planning moderate changes

39%

Planning to virtualize entire

network
Planning minimal changes

Dont know

2%
36%
6%

12

BUSINESS CONTINUITY

52%
59%

Nearly all respondents

report that business
continuity and disaster
recovery (BC/DR) are
considered when
planning network
changes

61%
64%
74%
85%

Network availability,
network security and
user connectivity are
top considerations

Network availability
Network security
User connectivity
Continuous data access
Data protection
Data replication

13

BUSINESS CONTINUITY
Legacy infrastructure is cited as the top challenge in improving BC/DR
Legacy infrastructure

42%

Multiple failure points

28%

Security gaps

28%

No clear requirements

27%

Inconsistent policies

26%

Infrastructure sprawl

23%

Manual backup and

configuration

22%

Traffic not prioritized

19%
14

SECURITY
Majority of respondents report that network security is a primary
consideration

Upfront consideration

59%

Mid implementation

28%

Post-data center implementation

7%

15

SECURITY
Top considerations when evaluating network security solutions to support a
virtualized environment

63%

63%
74%
80%
No performance sacrifice
Integrated virtual and physical security
Detailed reporting and logging
Full visibility and access control

16

MANAGEMENT
Optimal network management requires a single interface that provides visibility
into both the virtual and physical networks
Helps organizations identify the source of performance and other issues
Also provides a single interface to automate behavior across the entire network

17

SIMPLE, OPEN, SMART

Many IT organizations have virtualized their data center resources
But, to achieve even greater levels of agility and flexibility, they need to also
virtualize the network
Juniper Networks MetaFabric architecture:
Enables simple, open and smart data centers
Accelerates the deployment and delivery of applications within
and across multiple sites and clouds
Simple

Open

Smart

Easy to
deploy & use

Maximize
flexibility

Save time,
improve performance
18

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Download the Network World eGuide:
The State of the Virtualized Data Center
Click Here