The modern enterprise is comprised of a complex set of application stacks that span a disparate variety of virtual machines, physical servers, and proprietary storage hardware. Tentacles reach from headquarters, branch and remote offices, and offshore facilities around the world to technology stacks, SaaS providers and a multitude of applications.
Over the years layer after layer of technology has accumulated, but rather than replace what came before, we simply built on top through a long series of incremental decisions and implementations. For many, mainframes were bolstered by a client-server layer that moved into data centers. Web technology added SaaS beyond our data centers before virtualization and server consolidation reorganized everything into more manageable chunks.
Mobile computing, the Internet of Things, and regulatory restrictions on data retention have all contributed to rapid data growth, making it increasingly difficult to understand, manage, and secure everything.
