12/2/2008 -- The datacenter of the future will look drastically different from its incarnation of today, as technology purveyors and enterprise buyers increasingly focus on greening things up. But it won't be too drastically different.

At least one prevailing technology should remain entrenched: Ethernet. According to market watcher Current Analysis, a business-oriented push will help ensure that Ethernet, in one flavor or another, will remain the preeminent network technology, displacing competitors such as fibre channel (FC) and InfiniBand.

"For there to be truly agile, cost-optimized and efficient datacenters, the network must be transitioned to a single technology," said Steven Schuchart, a principal analyst with Current Analysis, in a statement. "That technology is Ethernet. There is significant opportunity to break the old networking paradigms and advocate one network technology for the datacenter."

Ethernet inevitability is actually a function of the rising importance of both green IT and virtualization, according to Schuchart.

There are a number of reasons why Ethernet is a natural for the next-gen datacenter, Schuchart said, starting with its pervasiveness and its demonstrable interoperability. Ethernet, unlike competitive transports, doesn't have a history of brand- or origin-related compatibility issues.

Ethernet's datacenter ascendance comes at the expense of two competitive technology offerings: FC -- which no longer enjoys a speed advantage over high-speed Ethernet (and which was always at a price disadvantage) -- and InfiniBand, which Schuchart said lacks the "economies of scale needed for enterprise datacenter applications." --Stephen Swoyer