Research firm Gartner recently placed Software Defined Anything (SDx) among the top 10 strategic technology trends for 2014. In other words, Gartner views SDx as a technology which will have a significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years.

As a result, it is not surprising that software defined storage (SDS) is among the many SDx technologies which has already caught the interest of those seeking to work more effectively in this era of big data.

In a recent installment of The Backup Window, EMC’s Stephen Manley discusses how SDS promises to simplify storage management by delivering service level objectives across various storage systems while selecting and configuring the appropriate storage personality specific to an organization’s workload.

Manley notes that SDS will have profound implications on the roles of backup and storage administrators and how companies build as well as purchase protection solutions. Read how he believes this approach lays the groundwork for a massive shift from data protection to data management and how it can facilitate a new level of IT productivity.

What are your thoughts on storage management, protection and the ability to easily provision protected storage to meet service level objectives? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.