Data centers have traditionally been built using hardware architectures that are too rigid and slow to respond to the needs of modern dynamic applications, especially those designed to run in the cloud or in a hybrid environment. By contrast, SDI focuses on software innovation over hardware. It separates the hardware from the applications and software that will run on the platform. Advanced functionality and automation are delivered by software rather than expensive proprietary hardware. Compute, networking and storage capacity is provided in dynamic, easy-to-use pools of resources that are quickly deployed and easily managed, based on the needs of the workloads or users.