It is considered a class of converged infrastructure, and uses management software to combine compute, storage and network elements.
[1] American market intelligence firm International Data Corporation (IDC) describes CDI as "an emerging category of infrastructure systems that make use of high-bandwidth, low-latency interconnects to aggregate compute, storage, and networking fabric resources into shared resource pools that can be available for on-demand allocation.
"[2] These systems use what is sometimes called rack-scale architecture, which allows network operators to replace components on a rack while the entire data center behaves as a virtualized server.
The individual components can be managed as a resource pool, allowing dynamic provisioning and deprovisioning with a common application programming interface (API).
[4] Operators can use open APIs in composable infrastructure in order to integrate third-party software and hardware with proprietary solutions.