Consolidation:-
“Combining of various units into more efficient and stable larger units is called a CONSOLIDATION .Server consolidation is an approach to the efficient usage of computer server resources in order to reduce the total number of servers or server locations that an organization requires.
Always on:-
Always on is latest technology introduce in 2012 SQL SERVER .Always on is HA-DR and alternate solution for Database Mirroring. Its very flexible and multiple secondaries so its used for offload balancing, secondary as read-only, backup and reporting purpose