What’s Hot for 2011?

Forbes Magazine predicts that smaller vendors with specialized expertise that deliver value to customers will continue to thrive. And, no more social networking nonsense, as organizations move employees away from social sites at work.

EDI’s Associates predict:

Changes in Congress bring turmoil and indecision in healthcare legislation through 2012. The economy stays in slow growth mode throughout 2011, although the manufacturing sector will remain stable. Green stays in focus, especially in data centers.

For the audio-visual industry, groundbreaking changes will happen in 2011. With the first IEEE Audio-video Bridging Standard (AVB) published and several others to follow, the door is opening for huge AV technology changes in the consumer, automotive, and professional AV markets. Simply put, new AV products will be AVB-enabled allowing, for example, uncompressed HD video to be easily passed and routed over a 10GB Ethernet link. This means that soon there will be no need for expensive, dedicated AV routers and switchers. Instead, an AVB-enabled IT network will take care of the job. As AV finally catches up to the rest of the networked world, we will be watching streaming HD AV at a lower cost and far better quality.

Everything will continue to trend to being IP-based. Data networks will be the backbone for everything, requiring robust, reliable, and redundant networks. We will also see a lot more IPTV distributed in place of traditional analog coax CATV.

Cloud computing and containerized data center solutions will “ease the squeeze” associated with IT growth. Specialized colocation providers will continue to emerge and capitalize on the opportunities that electronic medical records (EMRs) are presenting. IT professionals will find ways to solve their problems but will continue to require assistance from providers like EDI for years to come.

We will continue to see colocation providers gain customer base and geography for at least another year. Small and medium size businesses just do not have the capital to build their own high reliability data centers. In approximately 2 to 3 years colocations will begin to lose their customer base as server manufacturers build equipment that is more tolerant to temperature and humidity. The equipment will become more robust, and the manufacturers will relax the operating environment parameters.

The Health Information Technology for Economic & Clinical Health (HITECH) Act will continue to drive healthcare IT and divert significant capital and energy away from facilities and construction. The need to retrofit old healthcare facilities with a robust network and communications infrastructure and for data centers will increase as a result. Healthcare projects that have been on hold for the past year or two will begin to move forward at an increasing pace. Use of an electronic medical record will reach a tipping point and begin to deliver on the promise of increased safety and quality while also lowering costs.

Network infrastructure in hospitals is getting more robust and capable of handling more diverse and bandwidth intensive applications. One of these in particular is video surveillance. With the advancements of video compression at the edge (within the camera) and expansion of the hospital’s network backbone, we are seeing a strong push for IP-based video surveillance systems running on the hospital’s LAN and WAN. These systems support cameras that deliver much better image quality and are more easily integrated with other security-related systems, such as access control, infant protection, and asset tracking. We will continue to see healthcare clients wanting IP-based video, as well as integration of their security systems with some of their healthcare-related systems that they may have not thought about integrating in the past.

With 2011 upon us, it will be interesting to see how far along the design sector has come in terms of green building, integrated project delivery (IPD), and building information modeling (BIM). Some believe that one methodology leads to another: BIM leads to IPD, and IPD leads to Green Buildings. Each one can be accomplished separately, but they lend themselves to each other so very well, and as a group it makes up the continuing evolution of the design and construction process. We as designers are stuck on the first step, effectively solving the BIM questions. How do we share our models without stepping on each others’ toes? Do we expand our scope of work without raising fees? How much of our everyday work process has to change just because of our design software? Thankfully, all indications over the last year or so lead us to believe these questions are yesterday’s problems. We are ready to move onto tomorrow’s problem of integrated project delivery and how our deliverable will change to reflect all of the advances we have achieved in BIM. IPD is where BIM gets to “put its money where its mouth is”! Does it really save money in construction costs? Does it really prevent RFIs and change orders? Does it really mean paper drawings are giving way to electronic document sets? The answers to some of these questions are already becoming apparent, but the sample size is small. There will soon be many more real life examples of BIM projects and integrated deliverables with which to measure progress.

We shall see!

For the rest of us – we’re just not sure! Listening to too much talk radio and the news keeps us in a state of total confusion!!!

In This Newsletter

EDI Wins eBay Modular Data Center “Project Mercury”

2010 Lessons Learned

Project Spotlight

New Project

Data Center Energy Practitioner Program

Interested in a Complimentary Data Center Assessment?

High-Density Cooling

Ten Flaws of Data Center Air Flow

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

What’s Hot for 2011?

EDI's Newest Associate

Count on Us Award

Intriguing Lives Outside of EDI

EDI on Winning Project Team of 2010 National Design-Build Award

EDI Out & About

In 2010

November 13-15: Jim Harrison and Shane Fischer attended the BICSI Fall Conference & Exhibition in Las Vegas.

October 3-6: Rob Nash-Boulden and Gary Cudmore attended AFCOM in Las Vegas.

November 5: Rob Nash-Boulden attended the Phoenix Business Journal’s Healthcare of the Future Roundtable in Phoenix.

November 14-18: Don Kinser and Howard Wageman attended the Healthcare Design 2010 conference in Las Vegas.

November 14-18: Rob Nash-Boulden and Gary Cudmore attended the 7x24 Exchange Conference in Phoenix.

In 2011

February 20-24: EDI will be attending the 2011 HIMSS Annual Conference & Exhibition in Orlando.

March 13-16: EDI will be attending the ASHE 2011 PDC Summit in Tampa. Don Kinser, Chairman and President of EDI, will present a session on “Legislation, Trends, and Our Current Healthcare System: Key Factors Affecting the Future of Healthcare Technology” on Tuesday, March 15, from 3-4 PM.