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The primary objective of this ESG research study was to survey networking professionals working at enterprise organizations (i.e., 1,000 employees or more) in order to better understand the changes taking place in their data centers, how these changes were impacting their network infrastructure and operations, how they were addressing data center networking challenges in the short-term, and what they were planning for data center networking as they looked to future business and technical requirements.
To assess these issues, ESG asked 280 networking professionals to respond to questions in areas including:
Data center strategy
How many data centers do large organizations have today?
Are large organizations consolidating data centers? If so, how many data centers do they hope to eliminate? Are they consolidating discrete business unit data centers into multi-tenant mega-centers?
Are they extending applications or IT operations across multiple data centers? If so, which specific applications and IT operations activities are being extended?
Is server virtualization a substantial component of their data center strategy? How will the use of server virtualization change in the future?
Data center networking environment
What types of data center networking architectures are in place today?
How are networks segmented? Why is some segmentation done at Layer 2 and some at Layer 3?
What is the standard server-to-network interface today? How will this change in the future?
What is the standard data center network cabling infrastructure today? How will this change in the future?
How is networking equipment provisioned and managed?
What is the role of virtual switches today? How will this change?
What is the impact of web applications on data center networks?
Data center networking operations challenges
What types of network operations problems do large organizations face today?
What are the biggest network operations challenges?
Which network operations activities are most costly and time consuming?
Data center networking adaptation
How is the networking organization changing to adjust to data center scaling and operational requirements?
Are large organizations adopting new data center networking technologies? If so, which ones?
Are enterprises implementing converged data center networks (i.e. common network for storage and data traffic)? If so, why and how?
What changes are taking place in order to support more server-to-server web application traffic within the data center?
Data center networking strategy
Which data center networking technology innovations are users aware of?
Are enterprises interested in data center network fabric architecture? Will they implement data center network fabrics over time?
Page Count: 49
Table of Contents
Executive Summary
Report Conclusions
Introduction
Research Objective
Research Findings
Enterprise Data Center Profile
Data Center Technologies
Virtual Switch Use
Networking Organizations in Transition
Data Center Networking Is Fraught With Many Challenges
Web Application Impact on Data Center Networks
The Changing Data Center Networking Landscape
Virtual Switching and the Physical Network
The Need for Speed
Network Convergence
Data Center Switching Changes
Research Implications
Research Implications for Enterprise IT & Business Professionals
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