2008 Predictions

As promised, here are my 2008 Predictions. I don't think my predictions from last year (fiber to the home) came true at all -- as I visit my in-laws who can't even get a cable-modem or DSL in their new neighborhood (yet).

Ok...here goes:

1. As I have eluded to in the past, I am a big fan of utility computing. It does receive a fair amount of hype, but I can see the true potential in it and why people will start to see the light in coming years. Events that 365 Main and Rackspace encountered in 2007 helped paint the picture for web sites that only had a single hosting presence to wake up and take a more serious look at utility computing. Amazon EC2, S3, 3Tera and Joyent are pretty cool and worth a look for most anyone. I think the tools to measure, monitor and deploy utility computing will definitely grow in the enterprise realm, now that the internet sites/companies have pioneered so much. The growth of utility computing and enterprise interest should also help along the WAN accelerations and optimization industries as well. BTW--there was an interesting response to Intel's question about what emerging trends are in compute models - check it out here.

2. 2008 will see the hype phrase "Software as a Service" finally fizzle. There's no rocket science here people - get over the warm-fuzzy terminology.

3. Green/New Energy sources will continue to be big news in 2008 (big stretch here, huh?). Only two things I'll offer here.... the first, is to take a look at the Kleiner Perkins (Venture Capital firm) list of greentech companies they are funding --- here. I listend to Tom Perkins on the Venture Voice podcast recently -- what an interesting and amazing person! The second item is wind; Kansas took recent headlines , but it will continue to grow as a new energy source in 2008. There was an interesting story in Sunday's Des Moines Register about the wind industry in Iowa....some interesting stats and stories to see how the industry is growing here.

4. With the data center industry booming, I think 2008 will see more data center related services come out. I.E.- this article

5. Companies to watch / will be acquired? Akamai (an established company, but they will be doing exciting things), Riverbed , Savvis , Platespin , 3tera , and Joyent

6. Political ads will continue to be skipped on my Tivo . Living in Iowa means the privilege of having the first caucus, but the trade is enduring 24x7 ads on TV from the candidates. Maybe after the caucuses are over the ads will take a break until next fall.

7. Death to the RIAA in 2008 -- Alleluia!!

8. Here is my shot in the dark prediction -- at least 1 large acquisition will take place in 2008 in the Colocation or CDN industry. There has been a lot of activity here and some quality players; I think the market has hit a spot that something big will happen next year.

MLB and Orbitz Case Studies

Network World is probably in the top 3 for my favorite magazines and web sites to visit. They really do a good job of capturing the news, but also delivering some good interviews that demonstrate real world use of the technologies they cover. Two particular stories caught my attention recently that I enjoyed:

The first was a story of Major League Baseball Advanced Media -- I visit mlb.com and stlcardinals.com frequently. The article interviews Ryan Nelson, director of operations for MLB Advanced Media. MLB uses Joyent services to 'dial-up' and 'dial-down' their use of servers and compute power based on the seasonal load and needs. I had heard of Joyent before, but never really looked into them. It's a pretty cool service, and seeing how MLB.com uses their service helps solidify the concept. Yes, it's another company jumping on the "cloud computing" bandwagon, but they offer some pretty innovative solutions, coupled with some cool Sun hardware and technologies. I had a brief introduction to Sun virtualization technology at the Blackbox event earlier this year, but if you haven't checked Solaris Zones it is worth a look. MLB has data centers in New York and Chicago, and thanks to the infrastructure they have setup they can move utilization between centers (for upgrades and such) on the fly. It sounds like Ryan Nelson has a pretty cool job playing around with this infrastructure and new technology. Check out this interview/article here

The second article (thanks for the link Ben) from Network World is about travel web site Orbitz. Like everyone else in the industry, Orbitz is trying to go green -- or as CIO Bahman Koohestani put it, "taking his IT operations carbon neutral". One thing that I liked about Orbitz (in this article) is that they know how much energy they use, monitor their use on a daily basis, and they know how much cooling they use for various parts of their operations. Going green is great, but keeping very close tabs on energy use and mining the data is even better (in my opinion). Orbitz has two large data centers in the Chicago area and Koohestani touts it as an excellent place to locate data centers. Chicago is RED hot now days for data centers. Like other stories we have seen about company strategies -- Orbitz is slashing the number of servers used, and consolidating data center operations world wide. The article has all of the details about how they are greening its IT operations.