VMware, EMC Shakeup Hints At Data Center's Future

gManZboy writes: "What's really behind the leadership switch that will see Paul Maritz become EMC chief strategist and Pat Gelsinger become VMware CEO? It's EMC's need to push its vision for the software-defined data center.

The EMC/VMware vision for a "software-defined data center" takes a conservative approach. Think of it as pulling existing legacy systems into one management console without worrying about the IT changes a cloud environment demands, like letting employees self-provision their computing capacity or imposing a strict environment limited to x86 servers. The software-defined data center message lets EMC/VMware cater to both legacy and newly built, cloud-oriented, applications without VMware or EMC needing to tell customers which camp they should be in. Here's a close look at the pieces that EMC and VMware need to work closely on together, to make such a data center a reality."