The face of something very familiar is changing. Within a few years you may not recognize the “face” of your data center because many of the technologies you’ve relied on for the last 5-10 years are being disrupted.

Update: Jaymes Krueger has recently posted an updated Cisco DNA Center blog: "Debunking the Top Cisco DNA Center Misconceptions." (March 2022). Read it here. ___ For years, we’ve heard about Software Defined Networking (SDN), and while the hype has been tremendous, we in the engineering community have joked that SDN stands for “Still Does Nothing”. Now that that SDN has been overhyped, marketers have moved on to terms like SD-Access (or SD-WAN) and Digitization. So, when Cisco recently announced their Digital Network Architecture, or DNA, the engineering community reacted with a collective yawn. Just another marketing term, right? Is this just an attempt to erase stale connotations of the first-generation SDN? Not exactly, as it turns out. Where SDN was the automation of network management, Cisco DNA is the automation of the network itself, or “digital networking”.

Working with clients on a daily basis, I’m often asked my opinion of “The Cloud”. Having been a consultant in the technology industry for 23 years I’ve seen a lot, from Mainframe to today’s Hybrid Cloud Management platforms. When I first started, I was fixing Apple Macintosh computers and their 40 MB hard drives and HP LaserJet III (PC Load Letter anyone?) printers. I personally was the proud owner of a 486/50 PC and the first Pentium 60 MHz were just starting to hit the market. I believe that when they hit the market they literally “hit” something like a tree because that first month I replaced a lot of them. Most local area networks were comprised of Ethernet hubs and heaven help us “ARCnet.” Computing infrastructure was still very heavy with Mainframes and AS/400’s and as a result highly centralized. If you wanted to manage your systems, you pretty much had to physically be in your data center on a terminal or computer with a terminal emulator.

Part One Of a Five-Part Series One thing that seems constant regardless of the organization is the struggle to reconcile the relationship between vendors and the business. Every theory and strategy out there. Some want a different vendor for each architecture: the different eggs in different baskets theory. Some take every purchase as a challenge to get an ever-cheaper price: the pit them against each other theory. While others go with my personal favorite, “I like to spread it around:” the I want everyone to like me and get an equal cut of my budget theory.

What do you think of when you hear the word “containers”? Do you think of big cargo ships full of containers crossing the ocean, moving goods to and from ports around the world? Each one of those containers are carrying goods of some sort. They may be carrying the newest 4K TV or other new technology, or they could just be carrying boxes full of clothes. No matter what they're carrying they are pulled off the ship one by one and placed on a trailer chassis, latched in, and moved to a holding spot or to their final destination.

In today’s increasingly competitive business landscape, an organization’s ability to quickly and efficiently meet and exceed customer expectations is essential. And yet few businesses today have the ability to gather useful business intelligence about customer behaviors and consumption patterns. Whether the business is a retail store, automobile dealership, or healthcare provider network, enabled business intelligence allows organizations to gather and analyze relevant data so they can engage with clients with the right information at the right time – a key to survival in the digital age.