Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference

09 – 12 December 2019 / Las Vegas

Composable Infrastructure:
Separating Hype, Hope and
Reality
Julia Palmer
@JuliaStorage

© 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its affiliates. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form
without Gartner’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization, which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this
publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Although Gartner research
may address legal and financial issues, Gartner does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are
governed by Gartner’s Usage Policy. Gartner prides itself on its reputation for independence and objectivity. Its research is produced independently by its research organization without input or
influence from any third party. For further information, see “Guiding Principles on Independence and Objectivity.”
 Anything Is Possible

1 © 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its affiliates.
Key Issues

1. What is composable infrastructure?

2. How can I&O leaders leverage it: Use cases, benefits and suppliers?

2 © 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its affiliates.
Key Issues

1. What is composable infrastructure?

2. How can I&O leaders leverage it: Use cases, benefits and suppliers?

3 © 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its affiliates.
What Is Composable Infrastructure?

Construct

Composable infrastructure
creates physical systems
from shared pools of
resources using an API
Deconstruct

4 © 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its affiliates.
How Does Server Wanted

Composable
Processors: 10 cores
Memory: 128GB Composer
SSD: 2x10TB

Infrastructure
GPU: 1

Help?

Fabric
Resource
Pools

5 © 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its affiliates.
Hype Cycle for Infrastructure Strategies, 2019
SD Edge
Micro Operating Systems
Edge Computing
Immutable Infrastructure
Composable Infrastructure Embedded Devices
Data Center Interconnection Fabric
Serverless Infrastructure
Dynamic Optimization Technology
Programmable Infrastructure
Hardware-Based Security
Service Mesh
Hyperscale Computing
Application Monitoring
OS Containers
and Protection
Site Reliability Engineering Micro Data Centers Software-Defined
Software-Defined Compute
expectations

Security
Alternative Architectures (Non-x86) Desktop as a Service
Infrastructure SDS
Zero Trust Network Access
Intelligent Infrastructure (Software-Defined Perimeter) Cloud Management Platforms
Internet of
Hyperconvergence
ML-Augmented DCs Things Cloud Computing
Edge Supercomputing Virtualization Software Licensing
Cloud Application
Virtualization SD-WAN
Software-Defined In-Memory Computing
Infrastructure Software-Defined Networking
Private Cloud Computing

As of July 2019
Peak of
Innovation Trough of Slope of Plateau of
Inflated
Trigger Disillusionment Enlightenment Productivity
Expectations
time
Plateau will be reached:
less than 2 years 2 to 5 years 5 to 10 years more than 10 years obsolete before plateau
ID: 388022
6 © 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its affiliates.
Infrastructure: Desired State

Template-Driven Self-Healing Intent-Based

Intelligence Layer

Integrated Orchestration and Automation Services

Software Defined (Programmable) PaaS

Abstraction Layer
Composable Public Cloud
Infrastructure Infrastructure
Traditional Converged/
Infrastructure Hyperconverged

7 © 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its affiliates.
Infrastructure Stack

• Composable infrastructure: Is
Intelligent
manually composed through
administration tools and functions
• Programmable infrastructure: Is
programmable through application
API calls driving infrastructure Programmable

• Intelligent infrastructure: Deliver on

self-driving operations as it optimizes
Composable
infrastructure resources through the
use of infrastructure ML and autotuning

8 © 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its affiliates.
Strategic Planning Assumption
Through 2022, 75% of IT leaders who deployed composable will not
leverage full potential of the solution
Why it will happen: Why it won’t happen:
• Not realizing or not requiring all • Requirement to leveraging and fully
capabilities of utilizing high cost
composable infrastructure. hardware components.
• Adopting new platform but not • Adopting infrastructure-as-a-service or
changing operational practices. service provider mindset.

9 © 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its affiliates.
Polling Question 1 of 1
Poll Type: Multiple Choice (Choose One)
What primary objective would you want composable to address?
1. Ability to compose custom hardware
2. Better hardware utilization
3. Steppingstone to enabling programmable infrastructure
4. Converting to infrastructure as we service model
5. Improved TCO
6. None of the above — This is hype
7. I am a vendor and I am not allowed to vote

10 © 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its affiliates.
Key Issues

1. What is composable infrastructure?

2. How can I&O leaders leverage it: Use cases, benefits and suppliers?

11 © 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its affiliates.
Composable Benefits

Efficiency Flexibility Agility

As-a-service Any server Fast

capability config. deployments

Automation Any
Unified API
enabler abstraction

Shared Workload
BYO software
resources optimization

12 © 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its affiliates.
Best Fit for Composable
• Use cases where infrastructure must be resized frequently,
support unpredictable workloads, and/or share high-cost
components among users or applications

Bare Metal
Dev./Test
Consolidation

Multitenant New
Analytics/ML
Environments Workloads

13 © 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its affiliates.
 Current use of
composability with
production infrastructure
is low as the
technology emerges

14 © 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its affiliates.
Composable Infrastructure:
What to Watch Out For
• Need Automation: Composable is not, on its own, automated
• Lacks Integration: Composable might create another silo
• Lock-in: Higher vendor lock-in versus traditional infrastructure
• Immaturity: Can’t yet disaggregate DRAM And SCM
• Price: Must justify TCO for composable features with price premium

Vendors have different definitions of composability

15 © 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its affiliates.
Composable Infrastructure Vendors

Product Name Prominent Features

Dell EMC PowerEdge, MX Kinetic Composable orchestration though VMware Cloud Foundation
Infrastructure currently in “early access”
DriveScale Composable Platform Users in production today focused mainly on Big Data analytics

GigaIO FabreX Startup with API-configured, PCIe-based fabric to connect

GPUs, FPGAs, or addressable memory
HPE Synergy HPE extending composable features to additional platforms
through OneView and fabric technologies from Plexxi
Intel Rack Scale Design Reference design sold mainly to service providers, via partners
including Dell, Ericsson, Inspur, and Supermicro
Liqid Composable Trays of NVMe drives and GPUs, with production customers
Infrastructure involving storage and AI/ML workloads
Western Digital OpenFlex NVMe-oF with composability API

16 © 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its affiliates.
Action Plan for I&O Leaders

Monday Morning:
• Evaluate vendors against traditional infrastructure and their ability to improve efficiency and agility for specific
workload or use case.
• Research applicability of composable infrastructure when your workloads have constantly changing hardware
requirements involving high-cost components.
Next 90 Days:
• Consider the deployment of composable infrastructure is appropriate for use cases where infrastructure must be
resized frequently, or where composability increases the utilization of high-cost components.
• Develop TCO analyses including improvements in efficiency, agility and flexibility aspects.
Next 12 Months:
• Run POC focusing on ease of use, deployment speed, and life cycle flexibility improvements, as well as time
and labor saved.
• Deploy management capability on top of composable to fully automate composable infrastructure and deliver
as-a-service capability.

17 © 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its affiliates.
Recommended Gartner Research

 The Road to Intelligent Infrastructure and Beyond

Philip Dawson and Daniel Bowers (G00373607)
 2019 Strategic Roadmap for Compute Infrastructure
Daniel Bowers, Chirag Dekate and Tony Harvey (G00375789)
 The Future of Enterprise Data Centers — What’s Next
Henrique Cecci (G00384249)
 Decision Point for Data Center Infrastructure: Converged,
Hyperconverged, Composable or Dedicated?
Paul Delory (G00384329)
For information, please contact your Gartner representative.
18 © 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its affiliates.