I was about to post a list of my predictions for 2009, which every year seems more and more of a mandatory exercise for editors, reporters, and pundits everywhere, especially those who are paid by the word. I suppose that blogs and social media will continue to proliferate, which guarantees that in a year's time we will have an even larger set of predictions for 2010 and beyond. Well there are two predictions already in the books.


Beyond that, I'd like to find the prognosticators who predicted the wild and crazy events of 2008 and get their thoughts on 2009. After all, after a year that featured auto and banking industry bailouts, Barack Obama's election, precipitous stock and real estate market plunges, roller coaster oil prices, and a billionaire dollar Ponzi scheme, who else could credibly claim to see the future?


Any way, keeping in mind that I failed to predict almost all the key events of 2008, here goes the rest of my predictions:


3. The data center industry will not be unaffected by the events of 2008. In fact, entire new data centers will be built just to meet the reporting requirements developed to make sure that the government will impose on our markets and large banking industry.


4. I'm not sure how we will manage risk in oil and real estate, but I know that exercise will require more data, which means more federal agencies, which means more reporting, which means more data, which means...


5. For a sure thing: Gordon Moore will continue to be correct.


6. Prediction number 5 leads to the following thought: Data centers will continue to get denser, more reliable,  and more efficient through innovation. We will see testing of grand ideas such as data centers in a box and smaller ideas such as better management of storage. We will see more cloud activity. We will see greater dispersion of new technologies such as virtualization, automation, and data center controls.


7. I don't think the industry is ready to settle on a standard metric, but more companies will be measuring more things and attempting to derive competitive advantage.


8. I have worried for some time that the number of communities affected by power constraints and the resulting high peak prices and potential brownouts would bring public attention to the power draws of large data centers, and perhaps regulation. Not this year. The government will continue to push the industry towards voluntary measures, and the industry will avoid making too many headlines.


9. The demand for information will continue to grow, and this leads me to wish a healthy and happy New Year to all my friends in the industry, who helped Mission Critical make it through its first full year. The list is long, but I would like to extend thanks to our readers; our advertisers and sponsors; my editorial board; my authors; columnists, and staff; Publisher Peter Moran and sales guys John Floyd and Russ Barone; BNP Media for believing in the idea of a mission critical publication and providing resources; tradeshow partners 7x24Exchange, BICSI, Datacenter Dynamics, Data Center World, Gartner, The Green Grid, Uptime Institute; and all the good players striving to meet the growing needs of operators of mission critical facilities.


10. Someone always gets forgotten in long thank you lists. I predict that I will have excluded someone inadvertently. If I did, please take no offense. I'll be happy to update the post to keep everyone happy.


Finally, please accept my genuine and sincere wishes for a healthy and happy 2009. I'm looking forward to working with everyone again next year.