For a large number of IT managers, increasing data center efficiency and driving down costs is always top of mind. The challenge is balancing this objective against ever-increasing needs for higher application performance. Today, most data centers have severely over-provisioned server, storage and networking hardware because performance demands have not kept pace with more efficient data center technologies. This often results in higher costs for power, cooling and infrastructure overhead.

NextIO, the premier provider of next-generation I/O consolidation solutions, has taken the rack-level consolidation approach to reduce the complexities associated with server I/O in the data center. This approach, which includes protocol consolidation; connection virtualization; and traffic consolidation, allows IT managers to consolidate all rack-level, non-server resources as well as to leverage high speed PCI-Express and vendor-standard I/O drivers in order to gain the full performance and feature benefits from “best of breed” I/O companies. Better yet, the result includes lower TCO and improved availability without having to rely on proprietary solutions.

For IT managers who are considering the best way to increase data center efficiency, NextIO has identified the following “trends” in data center provisioning starting at the rack level:

• On the storage front, low power Solid State Technologies are advancing rapidly to replace spindle drives closest to the server
• Solid State Storage superior performance and low latency will eliminate the need for performance-oriented RAID Arrays
• Distributed applications will once again be consolidated because of greatly improved storage latency and bandwidth
• As servers continue to shrink, consolidation of storage and server I/O will take place in top of rack appliances
• I/O Virtualization of traditional data and storage technologies will enable “on-demand” reconfiguration of server I/O resources depending on application demands

“Top of rack solutions for storage and network consolidation have a quick ROI by reducing cabling, switch, and storage costs by 50 percent or more up-front,” said Mike Huemann, VP Marketing, NextIO . “By consolidating I/O and storage technologies, they also reduce the associated power and cooling requirements. Lower costs and high performance is the reason these technologies will be one of the hot trends in the coming year.”