On the heels of EMC World, there is a distinct takeaway that anyone can see. The IT world is shifting its allegiance from hardware to software. If software is eating the world, then for its appetizer software is having a big plate of hardware. For our EMC World coverage we discussed storage systems, Big Data, information-driven applications, Interop, programmable networks, mobile-drive ecosystems and even the ‘Internet of Things;’ but more importantly than each of those topics was the fact that IT companies making up that IT ecosystem are rather aggressively shifting from hardware to software. Software-Defined baby bottles (SDBB) can’t be too far behind at the pace we’re seeing software take over. (Kidding…kinda)

Look no further than EMC CEO Joe Tucci himself for confirmation of this trend. The storage behemoth that is EMC, which rose to significant market dominance through its massive physical hardware…now spends the vast majority of its development resources on software. It’s reported that of the 12,000 engineers EMC has, a meer 500 are tasked with developing hardware. That’s 4 percent.

The star of EMC World further proves my point: EMC announced ViPR, a Software-Defined storage solution for managing large scale data centers. As explained in our coverage of the ViPR announcement, ViPR is pegged as a highly abstracted, vendor-agnostic platform built for service providers and large enterprises with sizable infrastructure footprints. It works by breaking down storage into two layers: a ‘Control Plane’ that includes provisioning, migration and other core functionality; and a ‘Data Plane’ that represents higher level Big Data capabilities.

It is clear to those with a watchful eye that hardware specs are increasingly becoming the ‘background singers’ to visible software applications. Emerging from such a shift is an ecosystem of programmable network resources decoupled from the actual hardware. Those hardware delivery methods are replaced by various software abstraction layers. (Reads: IT is breaking up with hardware to go out with software.)

Software is becoming the star, and hardware is falling out of the limelight. The interesting dichotomy of it all though, is that hardware still has a seat at the table and will for all foreseeable cycles. Physical needs are going to exist, but to what degree and on what level? Software will break that news, whenever it’s ready…

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