Cisco Systems is hoping for addition by subtraction as it looks to simplify how office managers deal with the endless amount of cables and wires.

The idea behind Cisco’s Unified input/output system is to reduce the growing number of communications cables emerging from servers. Steve Picot, Cisco’s federal sales manager, tells Government Computer News a server can have as many as six different network card connections, each requiring a cable.

Unified I/O can consolidate all the network connections into a single 10 Gigabit Ethernet connection large enough to accommodate all traffic.

A more immediate reduction in cabling might involve migration to blade servers.

Ron Bryson, an American Systems program manager, was recently involved with switching a government data center from regular rack servers to blade servers. He says the move reduced the number of cabinets needed from 200 to 86 and the cabling requirements from 100 lengths of 48-strand fiber to 30 lengths.

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