US-based pioneer in I/O consolidation and virtualisation NextIO is bringing its I/O solutions to the UK. The company has signed a distribution agreement with Zycko and launched a channel partner programme with eight new partnerships and pilots with six end users. Veteran channel sales and marketing sales executive Michael Logan, has been appointed as Director of Sales for EMEA.

David Galton-Fenzi, Sales and Marketing Director at Zycko commented: “We recognise I/O virtualisation as a truly disruptive technology allowing for greater flexibility and more efficiency in the server environment. NextIO complements our existing offering in this space.”

NextIO offers virtualisation solutions such as the just launched vNET™ I/O Maestro, a rack-level appliance that simplifies the deployment and management of complex server I/O by consolidating and virtualising I/O resources. Based on industry-standard PCI-Express (PCIe) switching technology, vNET™ I/O Maestro’s innovative IOV architecture enables a single I/O device to appear as multiple virtual adapters so that servers in the rack can share a single PCIe device.

Michael Logan, NextIO’s UK Director comments: “We are finding that a number of organisations do not have the bandwidth to support an increase in the number of VMs as they aim to consolidate. vNET™ I/O Maestro offers the ability to expand without adding boxes and cables by creating shared pools of I/O resources,  which results in major cost savings.”

vNET™ I/O Maestro allows IT managers to connect any server to any I/O resource with the click of a mouse, share physical resources among servers within the rack, and dynamically deploy or reallocate resources to servers as workload changes demand. With fewer adapters, leaf switches and cables, vNET™ I/O Maestro delivers greater operational efficiencies that reduce acquisition (CAPEX) costs up to 40 percent and operations (OPEX) costs up to 60 percent. The result is a data centre I/O infrastructure that is flexible and agile.

NextIO has signed up partnerships with a number of U.K. resellers, including Layer 47, NexStor, S3 SDVV and SICL. In concert with Zycko, NextIO plans to further expand its presence through EMEA in 2012.