CDI
About CDI
CDI refers to Composable Disaggregated Infrastructure, a software defined approach to pooling and reusing hardware resources (compute, storage, network, accelerators) across data centers to behave like cloud scale resources on premises.
Trend Decomposition
Trigger: Growing demand for AI/ML workloads and flexible, on prem infrastructure that can scale like the cloud.
Behavior change: Data centers increasingly compose resources on demand rather than provisioning fixed servers.
Enabler: Software defined orchestration and high bandwidth PCIe fabrics enable rapid reassembly of resources into workload specific configurations.
Constraint removed: Physical reconfiguration time and hardware overprovisioning are reduced through dynamic resource pooling.
PESTLE Analysis
Political: Enterprise IT policy shifts favor scalable, secure on prem solutions with cloud like agility.
Economic: Lower total cost of ownership through better resource utilization and reduced energy footprint; faster time to value for modernization.
Social: IT teams adopt more agile, software centric ops cultures; increased focus on sustainability and energy efficiency.
Technological: Advances in PCIe Fabric, software defined control planes, and GPU/accelerator pooling enable practical CDI deployments.
Legal: Data governance and vendor interoperability considerations shape procurement and integration practices.
Environmental: More efficient data centers with lower idle power and cooler runtime thanks to disaggregated resource matching.
Jobs to be done framework
What problem does this trend help solve?
It solves the need for cloud like flexibility and efficiency in on prem data centers for AI/ML and high demand workloads.What workaround existed before?
Static 서버 setups with overprovisioned hardware and manual reconfiguration for different workloads.What outcome matters most?
Speed of provisioning and utilization, total cost of ownership, and adaptability to evolving workloads.Consumer Trend canvas
Basic Need: Flexible, scalable, and efficient data center infrastructure.
Drivers of Change: Demand for AI/ML at scale, data center modernization imperatives, and software defined management.
Emerging Consumer Needs: Faster deployment, telemetry driven optimization, and greener IT.
New Consumer Expectations: On demand resource assembly, predictable performance, and lower capex/opex.
Inspirations / Signals: AI acceleration demos, lab validations, ESG focused IT strategies, and industry analyst endorsements.
Innovations Emerging: CDI orchestration platforms, PCIe fabric advancements, and GPU/accelerator pooling architectures.
Companies to watch
- Liqid - Pioneer in CDI software defined composable infrastructure; widely cited in industry as a CDI provider.
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) - Offers composable/ disaggregated infrastructure capabilities as part of its data center portfolio.
- Dell Technologies - Promotes disaggregated and composable approaches within its server and infrastructure offerings.
- Cisco Systems - Incorporates software defined infrastructure concepts that align with CDI principles.
- IBM - Provides modular, scalable data center solutions compatible with CDI concepts.
- Lenovo - Offers modern, flexible data center hardware that interoperates with software defined orchestration.
- Supermicro - Seller of modular, disaggregated infrastructure components used in CDI type deployments.
- Intel - Provides CPUs, accelerators and networking tech enabling CDI ecosystems.
- Nutanix - Offers software defined infrastructure with virtualization and composability themes aligned to CDI.
- Pure Storage - Disaggregated storage solutions that integrate into CDI style resource pools.