#4 Integrated Systems

The very use of the appliance or integrated terminology creates great angst for some vendors and users - particularly for physical appliances. And yet, deploying traditional server, network and storage systems has been a labor of frustration. The new world of virtualization has forced greater attention to speeding the processes of deployment and using resources more efficiently. In effect, IT is demanding the end of hard and fixed intersections and boundaries. This "unified fabric" concept will take time to evolve through increased levels of automation, OS intelligence and management tools, but the evolution toward integrated systems is well underway.

#5 Open Compute Project

Originally founded by Facebook and Rackspace as a vehicle to highlight their energy efficiency and hardware design projects, the Open Compute Project is now designed to drive open design concepts where own design manufacturer (ODM) equipment will be much easier to interchange within a rack or data center environment. Over 50 vendors and end user companies are now actively adding value to the project.

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