Between the move to cloud and Big Data monetization, to name just two big IT jobs, the modern enterprise has a lot on its plate these days. If CTOs heed every vendor saying that the network has to go software-defined or applications have to be containerized, etc.,  they will soon have more balls in the air than they can juggle. So perhaps the last thing they want to hear at this juncture is that the data center — the bedrock of the stack — now requires an overhaul. But according to some early arrivals to the party, that’s the reality.

George Slessman, founder and CEO of IO, said the company’s bleeding-edge mission — to fundamentally change the data center — is starting to catch fire. He spoke to John Furrier (@furrier) and Peter Burris (@plburris), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during The IO Conversation – The Data Center as a Platform event about where the data center’s been and where it may be headed.

He explained that data centers are essentially viewed as real estate — a plot of land is purchased, and a construction company comes in and builds the facility on top of it. “Then the technologists show up and put the technology inside the box,” he said. The result is that enterprises have to basically adapt their operations to the data center.

The big league difference

Slessman said that on the hyperscale level, which includes companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook, the data center is integrated into their core operations and optimized for what it is they actually do.

“We endeavor to bring that to the rest of the world, to every other enterprise and every other consumer of data center, to give them the ability to access that same capability,” he said.

Software makes an appearance

“The secret sauce of our platform is to be able to integrate all of the data center infrastructure into a single software-defined API that then can be exposed to the consumer of our services and the base layer products,” Slessman said, adding that this allows them to run infrastructure in a more “concentrated” way. It also gives them visibility into space, power, cooling and network, which he says make up 30 t0 40 percent of infrastructure cost.

“From self-driving cars to autonomous supply chains to drones delivering our Amazon packages, there isn’t a single part of our lives that isn’t going to live in the data center in five, 10, 15, 20 years,” and the data center must evolve to accommodate this, he explained.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of The IO Conversation – The Data Center as a Platform event.

Photo by SiliconANGLE