I love the data center business. In fact, I love it so much I even started my own data center company. With that being said, let me make a small confession, I don’t find a lot of the “exciting” new innovations in our business all that exciting. Don’t get me wrong, I do think things like helium hard drives, cold storage, and silicon photonics are interesting, but I’m not about to start foaming at the mouth over them. My non-plussed attitude toward these industry advancements is not for a lack of trying. Believe me, I have been very diligent in my efforts to become more “plussed.” For example, the other evening I tried to engage Mrs. Crosby in a discussion about the potential of Big Data, unfortunately, just then the last episode of True Detective came on and we both found it easier to be engrossed by the question of who the “Yellow King” is — I’ve watched it twice now and I’m still not sure — than about the inner workings of Hadoop. Despite my excitement deficit, I am proud to say that I have become very enthused by the strides that have been made in the development of the “Internet of Things.” (IOT)
At its core, IOT is an umbrella term that describes the prospect of being able to locate a veritable plethora of items — okay, things — via the web. Naturally, this will require an entire mélange of technologies, active RFID for example, but the end result is that you would be able to keep track of, and locate anything from your browser. Businesses are naturally very excited about all this. Among the benefits they foresee is the ability to maintain lower and more accurate inventories, enhance manufacturing processes through more rigorous parts control, and to even be able to tell that the guy who said he had an important off-site meeting is really at home watching ESPN. Each of these examples has some very interesting ramifications —except maybe for the guy busted for watching SportsCenter — but on their own they don’t even register on my personal enthusiasm meter.