Software-defined data centre 'is not just a buzzword', according to TUI Travel CIO Mittu Sridhara
TUI Travel is investing in SDDC but Mittu Sridhara admits not all technologies are ready yet
Software-defined data centre (SDDC), the phrase used to refer to a data centre in which all infrastructure is virtualised and delivered as a service, is not just a buzzword, and does serve a purpose, according to TUI Travel CIO, Mittu Sridhara.
Earlier this year, Computing surveyed UK data centre operatives about software-defined networking (SDN), which networking vendors are positioning as the logical next step in the data centre virtualisation process.
But 40 per cent of respondents claimed they'd never even heard of it - and this is just one technology that SDDC encompasses.
But TUI Travel, which acquired Thomson Travel in 2002 and merged with First Choice in 2007, is one firm that is investing in a SDDC strategy.
"We're looking into how we can get to more of a SDDC, it's an area we're investing in," Sridhara told Computing.
He said that SDDC does have a purpose in business and dismissed claims that it is merely a buzzword or phrase.
"It very much does [have a purpose]; clearly not all of it is ready yet for the volumes and transactions and scale in which we do things, but certain areas and elements are starting to become available," Sridhara explained.
"It's up to us to continue to test and see when these solutions are viable for production at the scale we need it and then we can look to deploy them," he added.
TUI Travel has a partnership with two companies in the US that make investments in technology firms and Sridhara explained that his firm works alongside its partners to identify what the latest trends are in the industry. TUI Travel then runs some of its own internal tests to see whether technology is worth adopting and if it is, the firm deploys the technology.
Sridhara is not alone in believing that SDDC is the future. The general consensus among a panel of IT leaders at Computing's Data Centre and Infrastructure Summit 2014 was that SDDCs are the future of enterprise networking due to the agility advantage they offer over their hardware defined counterparts, which allows engineers to spend time on more innovative tasks than simply keeping the lights on.