CLOUD & COLOCATION However, larger enterprises are building and operating increasingly complex data centres with homegrown apps written in a broad range of programming languages – Mike says this is where it gets complicated.
“ That kind of non-homogeneous environment is near-impossible to automate,” he says.“ We have to simplify networks – and that means removing anything that can be removed and standardising the rest.”
This standardisation is what enables operators to better automate, but Mike says that designing the data centre remains the most significant aspect of scaling networks.
“ If I have an abstract specification of what a data centre ought to be,
9 %
Amount net sales grew in constant currency in Q4
the tools can translate that notion into underlying configuration,” he explains.“ This does a few things. First, the highly trained architects spend their time architecting rather than jockeying a vendor-specific command line. Second, the blueprint quite naturally becomes multivendor because the abstraction loosens the connection between device and desire. And third, that blueprint can then be applied over
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