I’ll take Anton’s bait.
Here they are:
Prediction 1: The rate of adoption of IPV6 will greatly accelerate. Estimates of the final shutdown date for the last v4 global route will be moved up from ‘when hell freezes over’ to ‘long after I’m retired’, placing the problem right next to the Year 2038 Unix timestamp problem on CTO’s priority lists.
Prediction 2: Gadget freaks will continue to search for the holy grail of multifunction all-in-one gadgets. They will continue to be disappointed.
Prediction 3: Apple will announce a new product. The product will generate a media frenzy. Apple fans will crash servers looking for the latest product leaks or fuzzy prototype pics, and arguing via blog comments the merits of the features the product may or may not have. Unfortunately, the product will be missing cut and paste.
Prediction 4: Hardware and network vendors will continue making faster and cheaper bits at a rate that matches Moore's law. Software will continue to bloat at a rate just slightly faster than Moore's law, ensuring that state-of-the-art software running on new hardware will be slightly slower than last year.
Prediction 5: Disks will double in capacity. The average file size will double. The number of files stored will also double. All hard drives on the planet will continue to be 95% full. No progress will be made toward identifying the owner, data classification, or destruction date of the files.
Prediction 6: There will be a major security panic over some widely used but inherently insecure Internet protocol. The problem will not get resolved.
Prediction 7: Touch screen devices will continue to collect fingerprints.
Prediction 8: Sun Microsystems will rename two of their core technologies, ensuring that their loyal customers will remain confused.
Prediction 9: Web Apps will continue to be deployed with a 1:1 ratio of new web applications to applications that are vulnerable to SQL injection, XSS or XSRF. A few new applications will not be vulnerable. The rest will make up for those few with multiple vulnerabilities, keeping the overall ratio constant.
Prediction 10: Virtualization will explode, replacing hundreds of thousands of real servers with virtual servers. Unfortunately, the number of virtual servers will grow so fast that the number of physical servers will not decrease, and all datacenters on the planet will continue to have cooling and power problems.
Prediction 11: Endless e-mail threads will continue to replace mindless meetings as the preferred venue for designing, building and maintaining complex systems. After-hours meetings at local brew pubs will continue to be the actual venue for designing, building and maintaining complex systems.
And – For the bonus prediction – Someone, somewhere will figure out how to define cloud computing. The rest of us will argue over the definition for at least another year.
Notice how I didn’t stick my neck out on any of these predictions?
