The megatrends of cloud computing, analytics, social media and mobility are on a collision course for what IDC refers to as the “third platform for IT”, a term that the research firm had coined in a late 2012 forecast and represents the next evolution of enterprise computing beyond the client-server model.  Nearly two years later, the vision for the next-generation data center remains blurry and far out of reach, but an answer is beginning to emerge in the form of the software-defined data center.

Based on the hyperscale architectures developed by the world’s largest Internet companies, the notion of a truly programmable operational environment that decouples data management from the underlying infrastructure and transcends individual information silos is finally starting to take shape thanks to the efforts of vendors such as EMC. The storage giant has made several big steps towards its goals at its annual customer conference today with the introduction of solutions designed to bring the software-defined data center closer to reality for traditional enterprises.

Achieving economies of scale

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One of the main challenges that has reared its head in the wake of the perfect storm of innovation that is sweeping through IT is the increasing pressing requirement to not only manage but also exploit the vast  amounts of information generated  every day both within and outside the four walls of the organization. Put simply, data growth is outstripping the ability of traditional storage systems to cost-effectively accommodate it, driving the need for a new breed of solutions that can strike a balance between the elasticity and economics of the public cloud and the reliability and control provided by traditional enterprise offerings.

EMC promises to fill that gap with the newly unveiled Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) Appliance, a scale-out module formerly known under the codename “Project Nile” that can pack up as much as 2.9 petabytes of capacity in a single rack for increased density and greater operational efficiencies. The vendor claims that ECS offers a  total cost of ownership (TCO) that is between 9 to 28 percent lower than public cloud alternatives such as Amazon Web Services and Google Compute Engine while eliminating the compliance issues associated with moving sensitive corporate information outside the firewall and trusting it with a third party.

The platform marks a significant departure from EMC’s business model, which is based on selling the very  traditional systems that hyperscale is poised to disrupt. It is set to hit general availability this quarter along with a lineup of complementary professional services meant to make it easier for users to integrate the appliance into their existing environments.

Piecing together the hyperscale puzzle

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ECS is but a building block of EMC’s vision for the third platform. The glue that holds it all together is ViPR, a software-defined storage solution which originally made its debut last May and launched in September that year. Announced this morning in conjuction with ECES, the newest release of the offering hat adds support for more systems and provides enhanced programmability across geographically distributed environments

Through native support and a new plug-in for the Cinder block storage component of OpenStack, the ViPR Controller can now run on arrays from EMC, NetApp and Hitachi as well as commodity x86 boxes manufactured by the likes of Dell and HP. To help customers manage multi-vendor deployments, EMC is rolling out an revamped edition of the ViPR SRM and SA Suite that it says provides increased visibility into heterogeneous environments. The toolkit also  integrates with VMware’s NSX software-defined networking platform, which in turn plugs into vSphere, thus allowing admins to manage their entire environments from a single pane of glass.

Other enhancements include improved support for EMC’s VPLEX virtual storage architecture and new chargeback capabilities. As for ViPR 2.0 itself, the release packs patent-pending replication and workload distribution technologies that the firm claims streamline the management of large-scale environments spanning multiple data centers. Additionally, it’s compatible with the vendor’s Centera family of archiving solutions and features improved compliance functionality aimed at making it easier for companies to meet regulatory requirements for data management.

Like the ECS Appliance, ViPR 2.0 and  the latest version of the SRM and SA Suite are scheduled to launch later this quarter. Stay tuned for more product updates as EMC World 2014 unfolds.