Asia Pacific IT decision makers look to Ethernet fabrics to realize cloud ambitions

NEW DELHI, INDIA: A new research report from Frost & Sullivan shows that with rapidly increasing usage of server virtualization, enterprises across Asia Pacific are now looking at Ethernet fabric technology to help fully realize the benefits of business agility, operational efficiencies and lower costs. Commissioned by Brocade, Think flat with Ethernet Fabric – Importance of a Flat Network Architecture in Cloud Implementation is based on findings from a survey of 328 IT decision-makers from across the region.

The report revealed that two-thirds of the organizations surveyed have adopted server virtualization, of which 46 percent are now running production environments on virtual machines. More than a third of respondents said their organizations planned to pilot an Ethernet fabric architecture within the next six months and a further 25 percent said they intended to do so within 12 months.

“What jumps out from this new report is just how fast Asia Pacific enterprises are now moving towards cloud computing architecture,” said John McHugh, CMO of Brocade. “They are certainly not all there yet but road-maps are in place and there is a high level of awareness about the issues they need to address. Creating a data center networking architecture that is simple, secure, flat and virtualized is a top priority for the region's IT decision makers.”

With virtualization initiatives underway at most companies covered by the Frost & Sullivan survey, 35 percent of respondents said their organizations had already adopted some form of cloud computing with private clouds more common than either the public or hybrid cloud delivery models. While software-as-a-service adoption has been steadily growing in Asia Pacific in the past decade, Frost & Sullivan's analysts found adoption of cloud-enabled infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service seeing a huge spurt in the past 12 months.

“Rolling out cloud computing is complex, which is why it is recommended that organizations address the data center network challenges head on rather than waiting for bottlenecks to appear,” said Andrew Milroy, VP – ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific.

“That means virtualizing the network layer; optimizing infrastructure through flat architecture; introducing VM-aware automation to enable elastic scaling; and pro-active management to maximize availability and minimize opex. We therefore see Ethernet fabric becoming the critical data center network technology due to its scalability, flatness and efficiency.”

Anticipating these needs in 2010, Brocade introduced its vision - Brocade One – of a cloud and data center architecture with Virtual Cluster Switching (VCS) as the core technology for building large, high-performance and flat Layer 2 fabrics to better support server virtualization. Leveraging Brocade VCS fabric technology, Brocade VDX Data Center Switches are now being deployed as the Ethernet fabric foundation at leading-edge cloud data centers across the region.