As the data center evolved from mainframes to midrange computing and from client server to virtualized, the demand for capacity management tools has evolved in tandem. The introduction of virtualization, in particular, introduced the intelligent workload management (IWM) problem where capacity management was no longer a sufficient solution to assuring application performance. Guaranteeing application performance in today’s software–defined data center requires a real–time control system. Read this white paper to learn why traditional platforms are inadequate for real–time operations and how real–time control systems solve the IWM problem.