You said "IT must enable the business to innovate and achieve business outcomes faster through a simple, smart and secure IT model."

That's a lofty goal for many CIOs and their IT managers, that just can't seem to break free from the day-to-day operational responsibilities of owning and managing legacy data centers and aging network infrastructure.

It's the practical reason why traditional IT organizations won't achieve a greater impact on business outcomes in 2014. It's like these near-term demands, that they can't ignore, are forcing them to be strategically shortsighted. The notion of FAST IT might be frustrating to many leaders in that predicament.

Therefore, I'm wondering, is there a prescriptive pathway -- via the adoption of SDN -- that can help guide Cisco customers to a place where they can finally cast-aside these unwanted handicaps from a bygone era?

I suspect that many CIOs may be able to picture the desired destination (freedom from prior constraints), but few can imagine themselves arriving at the end of this journey. If you can provide directions, then perhaps you'll have solved the inertia challenges that they are likely to encounter along the way.