[Well folks its that time of year again when self professed pundits
make their various forecasts and projections on technology trends on the
coming year.
I too shall join this unlikely parade, but with a glass
of my favourite whisky in hand. Libations are essential to such a
process – not so much in improving the clarity of my crystal ball, but
removing any self doubt in the certainty of my forecasts.
A true
test for any seer is to look back at past predictions to see how many
came true. This can be a very humbling experience. My predictions for
this past year can be found at
(http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-top-10-predictions-for-internet-and.html)
. Overall I scored 7 out of 10 on my predictions for last year. Not bad
. It does help that I set the questions and I am judge and jury as
whether my forecast was right or wrong. So under those circumstances a
7 out of 10 score may suggest that I am not quite ready to place bets
on next year’s Oscar winners.
My predictions for last year:
1.
Cisco enters the wireless arena – Score ½ point. Cisco has not made
any major product announcements yet in the wireless field, but they
continue to spend a lot of resources in the Wifi standards bodies to
integrate Wifi wth 3G/4G
2. Google deploys national wireless 5G
network – Score 0. I blew this one. Despite Google acquiring Motorola
patents and significant growth of wireless services, Google has not
proceeded to build a national wireless network
3. Commercial
clouds for research take off – Score 1. Azure and Amazon are actively
courting research community. Several R&E networks have announced
cloud brokerage services
4. IPv6 growth still anemic despite Armageddon of IPv4 address shortage – Score 1. No surprise that nothing has changed here.
5.
Green IT makes some headway in Europe and Quebec – Score 1. Quebec
government through PROMPT has announced Green ICT $70m program and
Europe has announced funding initiatives under the 7th framework
6.
Major R&E data centers relocate to save on energy costs and added
security – Score 1. Facebook have announced their data center in
Northern Sweden and GreenQCloud in Iceland is starting to take off.
7. First 1000G wavelengths deployed – Score 0. Maybe next year
8.
Twitter accelerates past Facebook- Score 1, because I hate Facebook. I
am not interested in people’s personal lives. Just the facts mam’.
Just the facts.
9. Network Neutrality still stalled because of
actions of incumbents – Sadly score 1 here. Usage Based Billing and
sordid list of other practices continue to bedevil the broadband market
in North America.
10. R&E networks will evolve to become the
National Public Internet – Score ½ here. The US UCAN initiative is a
great example.
For 2012 I shall make the following bold predictions:
1.
Amazon to commercialize follow the wind/follow the sun networking.
Following the path of Greenstar as well as Hewlett Packard and AMD,
Amazon will offer a service to move computing jobs between their various
regions, as part of their spot market offering so that users can take
advantage of lower energy and CO2 costs.
2. The “enterprise”
centric cell phone network will start to be deployed at many
universities. Carriers and equipment providers are starting to
recognize that a cell phone network for data looks a lot different than
one designed for voice. A lot of traffic can be cached locally and it
makes a lot of sense to integrate Wifi with 3G/4G.The SURFnet/KPN trial
at University of Utrecht is a good example of this type of architecture.
See
http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/2011/10/surfnet-and-kpn-to-collaborate-on-next.html
3.
Commercial clouds become a fertile ground for innovation for both
universities and small businesses. Initiatives at JISC in the UK and
Globus On live will create a wave of innovation at universities for a
variety of new applications and services. Most of these will be deployed
without the approval or knowledge of the central IT department. The
cloud, like the PC did two decades ago , will free grad students and
researchers to bypass the central IT department for their computing
needs. See
http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/2011/11/forbes-cloud-computing-is-fueling-next.html.
Universities also outsource many IT functions to R&E networks as
in Australia
4. Software Defined Networks go mainstream on campus
and R&E networks around the world. Over 10 years in gestation from
original concepts such as UCLP and OpenFlow, universities and R&E
networks will start to deploy SDN to allow greater control by the end
user and to reduce costs of network equipment. See a wider role for
R&E Networks in addressing innovation and the broadband competition
gap
http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/2011/10/wider-role-for-national-research-and.html
5.
Small Canadian mobile operators go bankrupt or get acquired by the big 3
carriers. History repeats itself again. And yet by the end of 2012 we
will still not have a digital strategy in Canada or have opened the
market to competition
6. DNS goes underground. Even if SOPA and
Protect-IP are defeated this will not stop the copyright cartel from
trying to use DNS as a tool to thwart fair use of music and films. See
hide DNS requests from friends, foes and the feds http://dlvr.it/zBkp3
Alternate DNS under construction to counteract http://bit.ly/uFt9mx
7.
Siri becomes a technology phenomena as Siri is used in all sorts of
novel applications. See Aussie hacks Siri to automate home”, with
Arduino http://bit.ly/t0UuW4 /
8.Apple and/or Google deploy
software SIMs and breaks up monopoly cell phone market to create new
opportunities in M2M mobile market. See Ford has some problems with
roaming in its #M2M solution. The answer is liberalization of the market
and IMSI’s for all http://bit.ly/sYx3sW
9. Telcos in countries
that opted for structural separation become innovative and profitable.
Telstra, Singtel, KPN, etc are discovering structural separation is a
blessing. It frees their management from the monopoly rent mind set and
now they can compete on services. Given their huge market visibility
they quickly capture a large percentage of broadband market.
10.
But elsewhere in the world, especially North America, consolidation in
the broadband market continues with cable companies clearly becoming the
big winners. Usage based billing rears its head once again to kill
over the top competition. See will usage-based pricing kill the
streaming video star?http://dlvr.it/yR762 New Research Report From
Diffraction: Do data caps punish the wrong users? A bandwidth usage
reality checkhttp://bit.ly/rWYvMJ via@AddThis
——
Green
Internet Consultant. Practical solutions to reducing GHG emissions such
as free broadband and electric highways.
http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
twitter: BillStArnaud
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
skype: Pocketpro