Technology Review has an interesting list of their 10 Emerging Technologies for 2008 that are most likely to change way we live.
Here are some possible Green ones for the data center.
- Probabilistic Chips
- Krishna Palem thinks a little uncertainty in chips could extend battery life in mobile devices--and maybe the duration of Moore's Law, too.
- Offline Web Applications
- Adobe's Kevin Lynch believes that computing applications will become more powerful when they take advantage of the browser and the desktop.
And one I was surprised (no pun intended) to see
Modeling Surprise Combining massive quantities of data, insights into human psychology, and machine learning can help manage surprising events, says Eric Horvitz.
A video of Eric Horvitz explains his ideas. I've known Eric since he joined Microsoft and have had numerous meetings on enterprise applications for Modeling Surprise. In going through his recent research he is another Microsoft Researcher who has used Microsoft's Data Center information to test some of his theories. His current public demonstration is surprise modeling system for Seattle traffic.
What would be awesome is to see Eric apply his ideas to detect the surprises in data center operations. You know those surprises that get people fired or at minimum dragged in front of the executives to explain why something broke in IT. Hopefully I can get his interest on this idea given there is tons of data, lots of opportunity, and the impact is substantial.