There is a lot of talk about the software-defined data center lately, though the shift from hardware to software has been going on since the first logical partitions appeared in mainframe computing. Surprisingly, this shift continues to sneak up on people. When that happens, there can be power struggles and confusion as to who’s responsible for what. Many technology disciplines — networking teams, for example — still see themselves as focused on managing hardware rather than software and fail to see that virtualization has moved us beyond these distinctions.

What a networking device does, it’s core functionality, has been abstracted and is taking a new form…but will network administrators embrace this change? I go into more detail on this topic in my latest TechTarget article “Virtualization widens schism between server and networking teams“. Please take a minute to read that, then come back here and tell me what you think.