The IT world is currently undergoing a major evolutionary transition from traditional three-tier data center architectures to newer architectures that draw on many of the technologies and design principles underlying cloud computing. At the same time, economic pressures have businesses looking to reduce hardware acquisition costs and operating expenses. The upshot is that organizations today require cost-effective, energy-efficient hardware solutions custom-suited to their unique infrastructure requirements.

This white paper will discuss the forces behind the rise of flexible, cloud-like data center architectures; describe the hardware needs created by those new architectures; and show why custom servers from ZT Systems powered by AMD Opteron™ processors are an exceptional fit for these demanding new data center environments.