Some industry watchers say the virtualization wave is almost done, but I disagree.

Some observers say the virtualization wave is almost over because it’s reached the 40%-50% of applications which can be agreeable to migration into virtual machines. I disagree. i feel virtualization still has far to head and should bring many changes in 2014.

Virtualization is getting so complicated and deeply entrenched inside the datacenter that, in time, the virtualization administrator will discover a counterpart in another new role: virtual machine analytics or intelligent virtual system management. Call it what you will want, it is the art of using knowledge about running virtualized systems to revamp, reconfigure, and redeploy those systems in a method that utilizes resources more efficiently.

The idea of finding data buried in running systems to assist IT do its job better is scarcely new. In 2012, it was evident in reported conversations with PayPal CTO James Barresse and Microsoft’s Mike Neil, former manager of virtualization and now Azure cloud manager. It may even be present in a December blog post by acting VMware CTO Paul Strong and in an October InformationWeek commentary from VMware’s Bruce Davies and Martin Casado.

[Free and open source virtual machines aren’t the threat many think. See VMware Killed By Commoditization? Not So Fast.]

They suggest the brand new gains in virtualization will come from using big data systems to gather and analyze machine data. That data might be present in server-log file managers like Loggly, Splunk, and Sumo Logic, or VMware’s vCenter Log Insight. Data from such tools are being brought into products like VMware’s vCenter Operations Manager, a kind of middleware analytics, which collects intelligence from different points of the datacenter and is derived up with operational intelligence.

Where do we see improvement in 2014? VMware’s acting CTO Strong wrote in his blog post that machine learning must come to the datacenter to aid solve automation problems. “We need to use machine learning and large data to deduce structure, and good and bad behavior,” he wrote, acknowledging that the hassle isn’t limited to VMware alone.

“Among the things i’d expect to peer around the industry normally in 2014 is more use of those techniques, and tying these to provisioning engines, to enable more automated, policy driven closed feedback loops, for application service level management,” he wrote. The provisioning engines are products like Microsoft Virtual Machine Manager, VMware’s vCenter Orchestrator, and the open-source  OpenStack’s Nova component.

In addition to server-log files, the educational system ought to be ready to draw on network traffic statistics and knowledge from other devices, including firewalls. Can machine learning help protect against intrusions? Bill Roth, group product manager for VMware’s Log Insight, said in an email message that VMware is operating on “content packs” or plug-in additions to Log Insight which may collect and understand data from routers, firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and vulnerability scanners. Data from these and other devices will fit into the Log Insight framework for data handling. Work is underway to make such data useful through analytics, with much left to do in 2014.

Another area of change will occur inside the rapidly evolving realm of virtualized networking. Virtual networking started with a bang in 2013 as VMware launched its NSX Platform at VMworld. Cisco Systems responded by talking up its Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) as a substitute. Big Switch Networks, Nuage Networks, Cumulus Networks, and others have all posed alternatives.

Martin Casado, VMware network architect and contributor to the NSX Platform, said in an interview Monday that virtualized networking will move beyond proof of concept or early stage deployments into production in 2014. It deals with networking complexity, but faraway from resulting in confusion, it is going to offer greater “trending and troubleshooting visibility” into the network, he predicted.

Individual networks will soon be defined by goals set by the network administrator to control the network building a part of the SDN. In VMware’s NSX Platform, that may be Service Composer. It may take the declarative rules, policies, and goals set by the network administrator and use them to build a network service.

Such a service will follow the primary of “least privileged state,” with merely enough ports, devices, and access assigned to it to do its job. That reduces the attack surface to outsiders, Casado noted. Policies shall be created and automatically enforced that let users to have access to certain resources and groups, but to not others.

In addition, VMware is learning from early implementers, he continued. “It’s getting used in ways we never considered. Customers are doing what-if modeling with it by taking a snapshot of an atmosphere, moving it to a development environment, after which seeing what they may make work,” he said. Rather than needing to construct the physical network to determine if it really works, they are able to first test it in an offline environment, perfect it, after which push it into production.

Somewhat within the manner of vCenter Operations Manager, the software-defined network needs the assistance of analytics and machine learning, Casado said. As well as learning from previous network experience, the NSX Platform will reach out to other parts of the infrastructure, corresponding to network flow analysis monitors and firewalls, to determine what those devices know.

With such information in hand, NSX turns into “an erector set of virtual components, allowing the system to construct networks that experience only the capacity you will want,” Casado said.

The SDN could be another data-driven system, feeding results into vCenter Operations Manager. Operations Manager will use its intelligence to attempt to impose best-case configuration, capacity management, and function management. Finally, VMware echoes Cisco’s theme of pushing the network to become more “application centric.”

Its product suite will aim to enable customers “to accelerate the delivery and consumption of the applications that make their businesses real, that differentiate their businesses, while hiding the complexity of the underlying infrastructure,” acting CTO Strong said in his December blog post. As applications align with the business, the underlying infrastructure swings into place to drive virtualization deeper into the datacenter — last year 40%, this year 50%, because the ball keeps moving down the sector toward the 100% goal line.

Charles Babcock is an editor-at-large for InformationWeek, having joined the publication in 2003. He’s the previous editor-in-chief of Digital News, former software editor of Computerworld and previous technology editor of Interactive Week.

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