I love the data center business. In fact, I love it so much I even started my own data center company.

Remember when your mom used to tell you that, “no one likes a tattletale”? I often heard this response when I informed her that my sister had com-mitted one transgression or another.

Yes, sports fans it’s time for that spate of annual prediction columns where anyone who has ever been in a data center fires off their attempt at industry clairvoyance.

To paraphrase Oscar Mayer, “Everybody doesn’t like something, but nobody likes RFPs.”

Let’s face it, guys: Building data centers in increments makes good sense for both the provider and our customers, but we’re not doing anything that hasn’t been done for years in the construction industry in general.

Would you buy a car if you could only put one brand of gas in it? Think about how inconvenient and nerve wracking it would be if your gas gauge was hovering over “E” and you had to bypass the Shell station on the corner to find a Chevron.

In case you hadn’t noticed, data centers aren’t cheap. Not only that, but they also support applications that are extremely important to your company or your customers.

I was browsing through some industry headlines the other day, and one in particularly caught my eye.

Remember economics class? Unless you majored in the “dismal science,” I suspect that your recollection of what you learned might drop off pretty quickly after the basic concepts of supply and demand.

The 19th century French critic and journalist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr once said, “The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.”