The strategic I/O survey conducted in August 2012 among 1,529 IT staffers revealed key insights into the growing demands of data center networks, particularly the need for increased bandwidth and virtualization. Major trends driving this demand include cloud adoption, big data, and server virtualization, with 54% of IT managers expecting deployment of 100Gbps networks by 2016. The convergence of networking and storage is seen as critical for scalability and efficiency in modern data centers.