“Software-defined” is both industry shorthand and a real class of technologies layered on top of existing stacks. SoftIron applies this model to virtualize all resources, thus permitting multiple, parallel uses of the same underlying asset. This is similar to processor virtualization within a single server.

With SoftIron, resources are attached directly, without configuration. Once allocated to a virtual machine or tenancy, they have native, local availability without an intervening protocol layer. As a result, even legacy applications can consume resources within a software-defined model: scalable, high-performance, dynamically adaptable, and abstracted from hardware failures. See Self-Assembling, Self-Organizing, and Self-Healing.