We are all aware of the trends. As a result of the world becoming data center-centric, enterprises and service providers of all sizes and all over the globe are staring into the face of an immutable expansion of data. This comes in the form not just for storage, but also as a result of virtualization, cloud computing and the transactional needs of applications growth and the data interchange required to make applications deliver the value expected in a way that is compelling, safe and high-performing.

Realities are impressive. The Cisco (News - Alert) Visual Networking Index for example has the following highlights:

• Annual global IP traffic will surpass the zettabyte threshold (1.3 zettabytes) by the end of 2016
• Global IP traffic has increased eightfold over the past five years, and will increase threefold over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29 percent from 2011 to 2016
• In 2016, the gigabyte equivalent of all movies ever made will cross global IP networks every three minutes
• The number of devices connected to IP networks will be nearly three times as high as the global population in 2016
• A growing amount of IP and Internet traffic is originating with non-PC devices. In 2011, 22 percent of IP traffic originated with non-PC devices, but by 2016 it will grow to 31 percent.  
• Traffic from wireless devices will exceed traffic from wired devices by 2014
•  Busy-hour Internet traffic will increase nearly fivefold by 2016 reaching 720 Tbps in 2016, the equivalent of 600 million people streaming Internet high-definition video simultaneously

Think about the total infrastructure that will be needed to support this. And, think about the stresses that will be put on data centers as a result of the need for more things to access more apps and for those apps to interact with various capabilities in milliseconds. 

In fact, also consider that on the data center side of things, the Aberdeen (News - Alert) Group estimated that data growth from 2010 to 2011 was at a rate of 35 percent total (25 percent for small enterprises, 35 percent for medium-sized organizations and 44 percent for large ones). It notes that the growth has been in unstructured data and that data storage volumes double every 1.5 to two years. In short, the predictions about a “data storm” heading our way are much more than just predictions. The storm is already here and it is intensifying rapidly. 

As noted, one of the big trends driving the centrality of data centers has been the move to virtualization and the concomitant explosion of “everything as a service” (aka XaaS). There is no denying the benefits of virtualization in terms of the flexibility it brings to computing environments, especially the ability to dynamically optimize resource utilization based on current workloads.

The challenge has been, and this is why the question of preparedness is so critical at this conjecture in time, that the explosion of data in many cases has not been matched by an equivalent capability for the data center network.  In fact, to be blunt, traditional network architectures have had very little awareness of the applications that are generating traffic over it. Conversely, the new virtual application control systems are unaware of the conditions prevailing within the network. The result is that the network and the applications are operating effectively in silos. And, needless-to-say as a result, attempts by the network or the application controllers (such as VMware’s popular hypervisor) to improve resource utilization typically achieves suboptimal results.

The fact of the matter is that your network needs to be applications fluent and your applications need to be network friendly. How to achieve optimal performance by breaking down the silos that currently exist is the topic of the webinar Breaking Down the Application and Network Infrastructure Silos that I will be moderating on Thursday, October 4 at 11:00 a.m. EST.  

You are invited to join me, Andre Kindness, Forrester (News - Alert) senior analyst Serving Infrastructure & Operations Professionals, David Fortini director, Strategic Alliances Enterprise Network Group Alcatel-Lucent and Sanjay Aiyagari partner architect for Telco Alliances VMWare for an in-depth discussion of industry trends and challenges, and how Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) has joined forces with VMware to provide an application fluent data center network that is completely pre-integrated with VMware’s hypervisor vCenter. 

The solution supports virtual machine mobility and marks an important capability for IT asset managers to break down the application and network silos to deal with what everyone agrees is a gathering storm of data heading our way. Topics to be covered include:

• Requirements for automation in data center networks to meet the needs of virtualized workloads
• Specific challenges faced in the design and deployment of data center networks due to server virtualization and virtualized applications such as desktop virtualization
• Best practices to reduce the total cost of ownership with a data center network tuned for the delivery of virtualized workloads
• Details about the new VMware pre-integrated data center network solution from Alcatel-Lucent that provides the automation required for today’s virtualized workloads

Given the rapid pace of change that is transforming data centers and the need for speed, performance and seamless interoperation of all aspects of delivering compelling experiences to everyone in your company’s ecosystem; it is likely that applications fluency is going to become a necessity if it has not already. Assuring your virtualization efforts and networks are working as hard as well as you need them to is already a priority. Find out about a new path to help you attain that goal. 

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO Austin 2012, taking place Oct. 2-5, in Austin, TX.  Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO (News - Alert). Follow us on Twitter.