DCIM Will Get Hot, Pigs Will Fly, and Other Predictions for 2017

Chris Crosby is Founder and CEO of Compass Data Centers. 

It’s rumored that the great prognosticator, Nostradamus, once said, “Predicting the rise of Hitler and 9/11 is easy. Figuring out what the wife wants for Christmas, now that’s hard. Woe be to the man who doesn’t save his receipts.” Now that the holiday season is over, I think we can all agree with that one. For those of you who were just positive that the Mrs. wanted that mixer instead of those diamond earrings, there’s always next year.

After all,  isn’t that really the beauty of predictions? No matter how wrong we are, there’s always another chance for us to redeem ourselves. For those of you who eschewed the earrings for the deluxe model, with all the attachments, in the color that matched the cabinets, I would suggest that this year’s holiday prediction be something along the lines of “new car.” It’s got a high success rate and, let’s face it, you’ve got more than a few rungs to climb on the ladder of domestic tranquility. Having dispensed with the “free advice” portion of our program, let’s get down to the business at hand and kick-off the new year with my predictions for the data center industry in 2017:

• Until your refrigerator can call your phone to let you know you need to pick up more beer, everyone is going to be talking about IoT, but no one is going to sure that they’re using it.
• We will see several more DDOS attacks similar to the attack on Dyn’s internet directory servers. We’ll blame the Russians.
• Containers will surpass virtualization in new server implementations.
• DCIM will finally realize its full market potential.
• Pigs will fly (see #4 above).
• The government will eliminate subsidies to “alternative power” developers. Google, Facebook and Microsoft will be featured in natural gas advertising campaigns across the country.
• 100Gbps will become the default internal networking speed in new data center implementations
• Residents of Northern Virginia will begin to ask themselves, “Would it kill someone to build a Pizza Hut around here?”
• The public Internet will officially break due to a new enhanced reality release of game less understood than Pokémon Go!
• The government’s data center consolidation project will continue. In related news, the sun will burn out in 5 billion years.

There you have it, my predictions for the next 365 days of all things data centers. As you can see, there’s a little something for everyone, so stop your groveling, donate that mixer to charity, keep an eye on those new car ads and enjoy what the new year has to offer.

Opinions expressed in the article above do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Data Center Knowledge and Penton.

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