IDC – The New Need for Speed in the Datacenter Network

Today’s datacenter networks must better adapt to and accommodate business-critical application workloads. Datacenters will have to increasingly adapt to virtualized workloads and to the ongoing enterprise transition to private and hybrid clouds. Pressure will mount on datacenters not only to provide increased bandwidth for 3rd Platform applications such as cloud and data analytics but also to deliver the agility and dynamism necessary to accommodate shifting traffic patterns (with more east-west traffic associated with server-to-server flows, as opposed to the traditional north-south traffic associated with client/server computing). Private cloud and legacy applications will also drive daunting bandwidth and connectivity requirements. This Technology Spotlight examines the increasing bandwidth requirements in enterprise datacenters, driven by both new and old application workloads, cloud and noncloud in nature. It also looks at how Cisco is meeting the bandwidth challenge posed by 3rd Platform application workloads in the datacenter.