As the concept of a software-defined data center continues to take shape, companies like NetApp are offering customers packaged deals that integrate multiple technologies even across diverse vendors. theCube team sat down with NetApp’s Director of Technical Marketing Vaughn Stewart and CTO Jay Kidd to talk about what NetApp is doing to define the direction of software defined data centers and how they are working with others at VMworld.

John Furrier began the interview at AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, with a brief overview of festivities that took place yesterday evening.  In attendance were celebrities such as NFL Hall of Fame defensive back and former San Francisco 49er Ronnie Lott, as well as other athletes, executives, customers, sales teams, and technology teams from many of the big players in the industry.

When asked to paint a picture of where software defined data centers are headed, Kidd described a very large data center spread out over multiple locations, close to water for hydroelectric power and easy cooling, and very few people actually on site. Instead, applications will handle most of the control and day-to-day tasks with only a “handful of people dusting the equipment”.

Watch the full interview below:

Getting to that level of automation and trust in an autonomous, intelligent data center presents some challenges, particularly for customers who are understandably wary of change. At the same time, many customers are becoming accustomed to a more mobile lifestyle where they have access without actually having to be on-premise, but they also have to be willing to adapt to the fast pace of change that is coming, Stewart urged.

Kidd then highlighted three key factors that must come to fruition if the customer base is to adopt an app-centric environment. They must be able to:

1. learn how to build IT as a utility: virtualized compute, network environment, and build a scalable storage environment from which they can build out

2. change the people within the organization to work on an entirely different operating model, running a software-defined data center

3. change expectations on the pace of change; things that used to take 5 years now take 2.

As data centers grow, Vaughn said, organizations must plan to support it with enterprise scale and storage efficiencies, becoming smarter and more dynamic. With technologies like NetApp’s Clustered Data Ontap, everything will move faster and true hybrid clouds will become more commonplace in enterprise.