Middle East CIOs are demanding more agile data centre infrastructure, leading to rapid adoption of Software Defined Networking (SDN), according to Cisco.

It said that in response to the rise in Big Data, business analytics, and sharing of rich media, data centres need to support new business models.

The SDN, which will support the rapid and continuous delivery of applications that are increasingly virtualised and distributed by the cloud, will increase IT staff productivity, it said.

The Middle East and Africa (MEA) will post the world’s highest cloud traffic growth rate of 79 per cent per year, as global data centre traffic is set to triple from 214 exabytes per month in 2012 to 644 exabytes per month in 2017, growing at a rate of 25 per cent per year, according to the Cisco Global Cloud Index 2012-2017.

In 2017, the cloud will process two-thirds of data centre workloads, it said.

Cisco’s Application-Centric Infrastructure (SDN 2.0) will provide simple, flexible, automated and agile data centre infrastructure, by putting applications first and driving network programmability, said the report.

Application-Centric Infrastructure fabric will enhance application delivery time by up to 80 per cent, it said.

Data centre innovation will be a key topic for Cisco at Gitex Technology Week 2014, demonstrating how IT costs can be reduced while making businesses more agile. - TradeArabia News Service