The large scope and scale of data movements in the near future will radically change the way data centres, data transmission and networks operate, says global networking giant Cisco Consulting Systems security solutions engineer Greg Griessel.

A key issue to facilitate this expansion is the automated provisioning of networks, storage and computing power on request, coupled with the need to enforce security across individual networks and in data centres at all times.

Information technology (IT) is already an essential and fundamental part of business processes and business is an important driver behind the changes in data centres, networks and the scale of systems, says Cisco Consulting Systems engineer Anver Vanker.

Consumers are also driving increases in data alongside business, which means that networks, owing to the data volumes, are being defined by software systems that operate the infrastructure, connections and policies of the networks, rather than the physical infrastructure itself, says Griessel.

“Cisco’s expertise in the networking and switching arena means that we have an intimate understanding of the complexities of providing security across networks, in the data centres themselves and in all connections and [during] transmission of data packets,” says Vanker.

Large-scale hosting for multiple clients in big data centres is an area of the industry where data centre operators currently deal with large volumes of data interchanges and this provides important lessons for data centres in the future.

Significant changes in data centres include the deployment of hybrid physical-virtual data-centre models, which aggregate control and security of physical infrastructure to enable the operators to manage data centre resources centrally.

This hybrid approach also enables data centres to offer clients the option of requesting resources at the data centres automatically, with the client determining the security policies and the resources needed.

A hybrid approach also reduces the need to provision each piece of equipment individually, where mistakes may occur and policies must be manually programmed. The approach enables policies to be controlled and updated centrally or even by the client’s IT department.

“Cisco focuses on securing the network and we do that by using an adaptive abstraction layer around the data centre to secure the boundary into the data centre. Our ASA1000V cloud firewall is an example of an adaptive appliance that runs on the hypervisor as a virtual firewall.

“We secure machine-to- machine data flows through the use of a virtual security gateway, also running on the hypervisor, together with a virtual switch called the Nexus1000V,” explains Griessel.

“The automatic provisioning of security, storage and resources will only be possible if we can overcome the large throughput problems associated with the increases in data, the high costs of data centres and controlling and monitoring data interactions,” says Vanker.

The world consumed 1.1 ZtB of data last year, but this is projected to grow to 6.6 ZtB of data consumed by 2016 – a staggering amount, he notes.

“The new generation of networking resources must keep up with the growth rates,” he emphasises.

Virtualisation will also enable multiple data centres to be managed according to a client’s policies should there be too few resources available at a data centre. This aggregation and densification of data centres, coupled with new, more energy efficient equipment, reduce the costs of building and operating data centres, explains Vanker.

“Cisco is focused on providing the elements of the network, computing resources and security to enable the simplification of data centre provisioning and management at high speeds,” he concludes.