It is a universal truth that business workloads are moving from the physical world to the digital world. This includes tech infrastructure tasks, as the Cloud and virtualization absorb what once were on-premise jobs. Physical infrastructure is starting to take a back seat to digital systems, where data and software rule.

To gain some insight into this convergence of systems into software, John Furrier (@furrier) and Peter Burris (@plburris), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, visited the IO Conversation – The Data Center as a Platform event in Menlo Park, CA. There, they discussed the events and insights of the day.

Evolving the datacenter

The conversation started as Burris mentioned that the design parameters for data centers are changing. The concern is moving away from where the physical asset is located toward how far from an event the data must travel. He felt the data center was no longer a place, but a set of tasks to perform and the people who perform them.

Burris continued, saying some companies will own physical assets and make them available through packages, Amazon’s cloud services, for example. How many of these entities there will be no one knows. Over the long term, the concept of data as an asset will take front and center in a variety of conversations.

Converging into software

Turning to networking, Furrier considered that the software brings the operating system to the business level. Burris agreed, stating that everything is data, software included. Burris stressed that software is eating the world, and companies will have to think of software as one of their business assets.

“The amount of software created over the next few years will eclipse everything that’s ever been done,” he said.

People, however, are still the main driver. Burris pointed out that companies still have to design around people. Data is on the ascension, and there are a lot of new technologies that companies should be thinking about. But at the end of the day, people will still be the creators and innovators for the foreseeable future.

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