Software-defined data center (SDDC; also: virtual data center, VDC) is a marketing term that extends virtualization concepts such as abstraction, pooling, and automation to all data center resources and services to achieve IT as a service (ITaaS).[1] In a software-defined data center, “all elements of the infrastructure — networking, storage, CPU and security – are virtualized and delivered as a service.”[2] While ITaaS may represent an outcome of SDDC, SDDC is differently cast[by whom?] toward integrators and datacenter builders rather than toward tenants. Software awareness in the infrastructure is not visible to tenants.
SDDC support can be claimed by a wide variety of approaches. Critics see the software-defined data center as a marketing tool and “software-defined hype,” noting this variability.[3]
In 2013, an analyst[which?] projected that at least some software-defined data center components would experience market growth. The software-defined networking market is expected to be valued at about USD $3.7 billion by 2016, compared to USD $360 million in 2013.[3] IDC estimates that the software-defined storage market is poised to expand faster than any other storage market.[3]
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