https://www.networkworld.com/article/3242993/techology-business/tech-predictions-for-2018-data-center-trends-to-watch-for.html
1.
Apple
continues to lose its cool. —
I think I got this one right. iPhone 8/X sales are not what they were
expected to be, the list of complaints is growing and more and more people say
the company has fallen behind. Hell, even I switched to a Galaxy after
frustration with the poor quality of iOS 11.
2.
Cloud
adoption will slow. — Oh, boy, did I
blow that one.
3.
Some
tech manufacturing will return to the U.S. — I don’t know about tech, although I did see Microsoft has
moved Surface manufacturing to China. But overall, manufacturing has gained 138,000 jobs in 2017 vs. a loss of
34,000 in 2016. And we all know who will take credit for that.
5.
China
will lose its luster as a manufacturing hub. — Clearly that has not happened.
6.
The
Internet of Things (IoT) will continue to spin its wheels. — There appears to be considerable
buildout of edge networks to accommodate IoT. And more and more tech is making
its way into cars. So, IoT is happening — just not at a revolutionary
pace.
7.
AMD
comes back big. — Oh, yes,
definitely. Sales are up and the Epyc server chip is scoring big wins.
7.
Augmented
reality (AR) will grow faster than virtual reality. — True, thanks to the success of Pokemon
Go, the first killer app of AR.
9.
Windows
10 will continue to sell better to consumers. — Guess I missed the mark on this one. Net Applications put Windows 10 at 23
percent in December 2016 vs. 47.7 percent for Windows 7. One year later,
Windows 10 is at 32 percent, while Windows 7 is at 43 percent. So, Windows 10
gained nine percentage points, while Windows 7 only lost four percentage
points. Obviously, Win10's gains came at the expense of older XP machines and
Windows 7 hangs on.
10.
Amazon
and Microsoft will continue to dominate the cloud. — Not a hard prediction to make, although
Google is making a charge.
3 tech predictions for 2018
OK, on to my
predictions for 2018:
1. Serverless
computing takes off. — This one is easy to make. It’s
bubbling like a cauldron with tremendous interest, and development is racing
along. Once people get past the misleading name and realize its benefits, it
will take off.
2. Google gains ground. — It won’t take market share away from
Amazon and Microsoft, but Google will finally give people a viable choice
instead of either/or. Diane Greene is revamping the way Google deals with
customers, and having Cisco as a partner can only help.
3. Edge computing will continue to increase. — With growth in IoT, increased data
consumption by mobile devices, and the rise of highly distributed applications
in the enterprise, compute will need to be spread out. While it’s one thing to
build massive data centers, some things will require a more balanced approach.
4. Two big gains for
artificial intelligence (AI). — One of AI’s major uses will be in areas where it can
respond faster, such as intrusion detection. It’s no longer enough for a
firewall to send an alert to an admin of suspicious behavior; AI will detect it
and act before an admin can come back from a bathroom break. The other major
use will be to fix or correct things that might otherwise be caused by human
error. Even the most cautious eyes can fail. AI cannot. Unless it’s programmed
badly. By a human.
5. Big data becomes
smaller. — A recent study out of MIT found big data
often means bad data. And with data sets growing into exabytes, companies are
finally going to become more picky about the data they collect and keep and
start discarding more.
6. The rise of smart
cities. — IoT will have
its chance to shine in “smart cities,” with things like intelligent street
lights and bus stops, autonomous public transport, traffic reporting, weather,
and other quality-of-life issues. The only limit on this will be whether cities
have the money for such technology.
7. SSD takes off in the
enterprise. — Two things are
set to happen: a major jump in capacity and the ability to fully support SSDs
in a virtual environment. Those two combined will make SSDs viable, not just as
a fast cache between memory and traditional hard disk storage but as regular
storage. And right now, there is plenty of supply of NAND flash, so the prices
will stay low.
8. Companies continue to
find a balance with the cloud. — With so many companies making a U-turn and bringing apps back on premises after moving to the cloud,
IT will finally stop blindly lifting and bringing everything to the cloud and
carefully evaluate what goes to the cloud and what does not.
9. White box servers win over IT. — Right now, off-brand server vendors such
as Quanta and SuperMicro are popular with hyperscale data centers from Amazon
and Facebook, but IT is still going with Dell and HPE. Expect to see that
change in 2018 as the off-brand servers gain the attention of IT.
10. Hyperconverged moves
to hyperspace. — Hyperconverged systems — fully integrated
servers with storage, virtualization and software-defined everything pre-build
and pre-configured — are already taking off like a shot and will continue to
accelerate. The pendulum has swung from customers not wanting vendor lock-in to
gladly accepting vendor lock-in if they can get a turnkey solution that’s up
and running fast. And Dell is running away with this market thanks to having
EMC and VMware under its roof.
11. Data center
shutdowns decelerate. — For a while, IT
was obsessed with getting out of running its own data center. Some harsh
lessons later, and they are realizing you can’t put everything on Amazon Web
Services (AWS). Your data warehouse, for example. So, IT will begrudgingly hold
on to the data centers it has, albeit with a smaller commitment.
