NextIO this week launched an I/O platform that allows data center administrators to connect virtually any networks together.

The company’s Adaptive Connect platform consists of a switch that incorporates PCI-Express adapters to connect to the transport of the user’s choice, whether it is Fibre Channel, Gigabit Ethernet, InfiniBand, Fibre Channel over Ethernet, iSCSI or Serial Attached SCSI. It supports any server, operating system or hypervisor, and any application. It does not require new drivers on the host side, nor the addition of host bus or network adapters in the server.

With Adaptive Connect, I/O can be shared and dynamically allocated to any application at as much as 500Gbps.

NextIO presently has an OEM deal with IBM, which manufactures a PCI-Express blade for IBM BladeCenter H and HT Chassis’. NextIO’s N2800-ICA, which is being announced this week, consists of a 3U rack-mount enclosure, with 14 x8 PCI-Express slots. It is intended for use by storage and server OEMs.

The N2800-ICA is accompanied by management software called nControl, which has SNMP v2c and v3 support and is W3C compliant. It also has a command line interface.

NextIO competes with Xsigo, 3Leaf Systems, Egenera, Scalent and HP, among others.

NextIO grew out of InfiniBand vendor Banderacom. NextIO was founded by CEO K. C. Murphy and CTO Chris Pettey. The company is funded for $38 million. Among its investors are Adams Capital Management and Crescendo Ventures. The company, based in Austin, Texas, has 45 employees.

Deni Connor is principal analyst for Storage Strategies NOW.