Today is the first day of a new calendar year. I'm hoping most of you have the day off, and I certainly do, but I wanted to ring in the new year with a look forward. What will happen in 2013? I think it's incredibly hard to predict, but I'll take a chance and make a few predictions.

Mobile devices will continue to grow in popularity. No great surprise there for many of you, but I think that we will see more smartphones sold than regular phones in 2013. With a large market of used devices and the constant push of new devices, new form factors and sizes, I truly think that we will be in a very data centric world most for most of the time in 2013. Between tablets and laptops sporting cellular connections and pocket sized smartphones, most of us (including non-technical people) will have some type of data consumption device in our lives.

Read the rest of "The Year 2013" at SQLServerCentral.