Data center cost structures are shifting, from equipment-based to space, power and personnel-based. Total cost of ownership and green initiatives are major spending drivers as data centers are being refreshed. Topping off those challenges is the rapid evolution of information technology as a competitive advantage through business process management and deployment of service oriented architectures. I/O technology plays a key role in meeting many of the spending drivers - provisioning capacity for future growth, efficient scaling of compute, LAN and SAN capacity, reduction of space and power in the data center helping reduce TCO and doing so while enhancing data center agility.

While most servers are equipped today with Gigabit Ethernet or 1 Gb/s bandwidth, four key trends are fast driving the need for more I/O bandwidth per server, typically 10Gb/s or higher:

• Adoption of multi-core CPUs in servers
• Adoption of SAN
• Server Virtualization
• Sharing of server resources