VMware defines the following journey stages toward SDDC:

• Cost center: IT operates as a cost center. The focus is on reducing costs through CapEx and OpEx savings by improving IT efficiency with uniform  anarchitecture and by virtualizing the infrastructure.
• Service provider: IT becomes a service provider by delivering secure, highly-available, and resilient IT services that meet business demands and service-level requirements.
• Business partner: IT transforms to become a business partner by automating the delivery of infrastructure and application, resulting in faster delivery times and more responsive IT, enabling a quicker time to market.

There are three stages of capability maturity for this data center virtualization and standardization: 

• Compute virtualization, virtualization for business critical apps, big-data application support
• Software-defined storage, network virtualization, extension to hybrid cloud, data center migration
• Management across hybrid, heterogeneous data centers

The following capabilities are crucial:

• Financial model and measurement: Awareness and understanding of the costs of assets and underlying infrastructure capacity
• Process and control: IT processes are adapted for virtualization but are largely manual, with ad hoc inter-process integration
• Establishment of standard operating procedures for consistency in operations
• Focus on limited, continuous improvement