The 19th century French critic and journalist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr once said, “The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.” Over the years the phrasing has been slimmed down a little to a phrase that we’re all familiar with, “the more things change, the more they stay the same,” which just seems to roll off the tongue a little better, I guess. As we celebrate Mission Critical’s fifth anniversary, I find Karr’s phrase, either in its original form or our current streamlined version, to be an apt descriptor of the data center industry. Although the market has grown substantially since Mission Critical published its first issue, the industry’s basic structure hasn’t changed all that much, and, in fact, is more the sum of warmed over ideas and concepts than of anything that would be classified as strikingly original.

This sentiment may seem blasphemous to some of you, and others may be asking, “Why is Crosby biting the hand that feeds him?” To these admonitions, my response is that it isn’t, and I’m not. However, and let’s be honest with ourselves, in this age of rapid technological advancement didn’t we all just expect a little bit more? After all, the original iPod was marketed as the “iPod Classic” a little over a year after its original release, and we’re already on the fifth version of the iPhone,