Predictions, schmedictions -- here are the real changes we IT workhorses can expect in the new year Last week, while mostly lying prone to recover from post-holiday alcoholic frivolity, I scanned an article in our sister publication, Network World. In keeping with this time of year, the piece put forth a trio of enterprise IT predictions for 2014. A quick summary: [ Also on InfoWorld: Protect our privacy! A pact for the new year ] 1. Frightened by this year’s revelations concerning the NSA, enterprises will become more cautious about the cloud. I’ll go with that one, though I think it falls short in its justification. Prying NSA eyes are certainly one factor, but an almost weekly rhythm of headlines like “40 million customer records stolen from Target” sounded the drums of doom to widespread enterprise cloud adoption way before the NSA’s faux pas. Microsoft, Rackspace, VMware, and most other big-time cloud providers advertised hybrid cloud as an instant cure-all, but their hybrid architecture marketing was simplistic at best. Security issues are flying in from all directions, and they will make designing hybrid clouds much more complex, which will in turn bring adoption to a compliance-burdened crawl. Enterprises will start vetting everything in 2014: the cloud, their smartphones, their new glasses, and where their office furniture comes from. Everything will slow to a technical trickle, and I wouldn’t be surprised if hardware server sales even went up a little as enterprises tuck their heads back in their shell and decide to give their in-house data centers an extension on life. The firewall devils you know … 2. Microsoft’s search for a new CEO will define the future of its products in your organization. Well, yeah. I have my own starstruck ideas over who might or should take over Redmond’s digital throne, and we’ll get to those in the near future, but any CEO choice is going to affect the future of Microsoft’s products and how you adopt them — unless the company chooses Miley Cyrus, in which case it’ll forget all about this fully clothed enterprise stuff and devote its full attention to a Kinect-driven twerking experience that will also lend new meaning to the term “tongue-lashing.” Sadly, we’ll probably also see the first noticeable spike in Microsoft stock since stonewashed jeans were cool. 3. We’ll see the rise of the cloud broker. I thought I might be missing something, but judging from the description, this sounded like a cloud consultant who would sit down with you and map out a vendor-neutral cloud strategy that would keep the NSA happy and the Nigerian royal family out. That seems to fly in the face of prediction No. 1, however. I predict there will be relatively few “cloud brokers” in 2014, and most will wear shiny suits and come from previous careers selling used cars. Frankly, I think the article missed a few solid enterprise predictions. Here are some of mine: The cloud won’t slow down in general, just in NSA-controlled territories Dollars to digital donuts, entrepreneurs in various pirate economies are looking to build government-neutral data fortresses, which means 2014 will see the emergence of ultra-high-security, Teflon-coated, Swiss bank-style offshore clouds protected from anyone without authorized access. At first, they’ll be welcomed by enterprises the world over — until it comes out that pedophiles, criminals, and terrorists have petitioned the Pope to declare Edward Snowden a saint for his role as martyr-catalyst. Corporations will follow the NSA’s lead You know it’s going to happen. One side of their mouth will be spewing frothy, pro-privacy outrage, while out the other side will issue secret directives to take a page from the NSA’s “How to Circumvent That Annoying Bill of Rights” handbook. Your boss isn’t just going to track his customers six ways from Sunday — he’ll also start tracking you via your Facebook-style social media twitterizing, the GPS in that neat company smartphone you were given, context-keyed dips into your server-side email inbox, and backroom, strip club-lubricated deals with your corporate-sponsored health insurance executives to find out who is submitting those telltale psychiatric billings. Your Google Glass will report where you’re looking during meetings, and those Angry Birds on your phablets are going to ask some very personal questions before your get to level X. It’s all coming in 2014, and it’ll take a brigade of WikiLeak warrior-weenies before we’re forced to face it. In fact, if you want to push your IT career forward in 2014, forget about that “learn to code” and devops hype and get into crypto and counter-crypto, a discipline that will exist if it doesn’t already. The NSA will sponsor a surge of almost-secure, consumer-simple encryption technologies to satisfy public relations, and companies will need people who can secretly break them as soon as they’re released. We’re talking big bucks — don’t miss out. BYOD will spark weekly psychotic episodes at corporate support centers BlackBerry may be going the way of the dodo, but you’re about to get slammed with BYOD requests for everything from Google Glass to the rumored iPad desktop (undoubtedly the result of way too many fanboys with unchecked rabies). Connectivity problems for Bluetooth-enabled underoos; smart watches that won’t stop playing porn, even though the user never accessed those sites (“It started all by itself. I never go to those sites, sir. Nope, never, not me. Must be a Chinese attack.”); and preschoolers who slice through your firewalls like hot knives through cheese spread using the VPN-enabled Windows 8 tablet that Daddy left out — these are the kinds of complaints that “Dave” from customer service in Bangladesh will soon have to field. You can take only so much before you wind up on a high-rise roof with heavy artillery. It’s going to be an interesting year, folks. If even a tenth of this stuff happens, mass runs on Advil are going to affect Pfizer’s stock even more than Viagra. That’s not even taking into account the fact it’s an election year with so many new social media channels available for political punditry that you’re going to have to hide in a backwoods cabin lit by torches and heated with animal fat just to get a break. Technology IndustryPrivacyCareers