Data centers worldwide are experiencing great upheaval. They’re growing by leaps and bounds — thanks to big data, IoT, cloud, mobile computing, and automation — but at the same time, there’s tremendous pressure on data center architects, operators, and providers to improve efficiencies and keep costs in check while delivering new services and scaling quickly.

While noteworthy upgrades have been made to servers, storage, and networks, the most limited commodity in today’s data centers is power. The advent of software-defined power (SDP) — following the model of what virtualization did for servers — can provide the aforementioned stakeholders with newfound strategies for offering customers heightened levels of flexibility and availability while lowering costs.