Software-defined infrastructure, or SDI, is technical computing infrastructure that is entirely under the control of software, combining software-defined capabilities such as software-defined compute, or SDC, software-defined networking, or SDN, and software-defined storage into a modern, software-defined data center, or SDDC.

A software-defined infrastructure operates independently of specific hardware and with very little human intervention, virtualizing important infrastructure elements such as processing, management, provisioning, configuration, and security and delivering them as a service. Software-defined infrastructure consists of physical infrastructure, virtualization, the aforementioned software-defined capabilities, and management services. Key attributes of software-defined infrastructure include scalability, agility, security, performance, reliability, and compliance.