High time for some navel - sorry - crystal ball gazing in the tech sector. Highly paid wizards at Gartner have been offering up their yearly blood sacrifices and divining to see what’s coming down the celestial pipeline.
Like everything else, there’s a certain margin of error with all of this but some of them will probably pan out.
Law of averages really, but one thing it seems sure of is that the blogging phenomenon will level off, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Apparently, there are 200 million ex-bloggers that have ran out of stuff to say or the time to say it well.
Here are the Giz highlights – jump for the full text though.-Martin Lynch
1. Blogging and community contributors will peak in the first half of 2007.
2. Vista will be the last major release of Microsoft Windows.
3. By 2010, the average total cost of ownership (TCO) of new PCs will fall by 50%.
4. By 2009, corporate social responsibility (CSR) will be a higher board- and executive-level priority than regulatory compliance.
5. By the end of 2007, 75% of enterprises will be infected with undetected, financially motivated, targeted malware that evaded their traditional perimeter and host defenses.
6. By 2010, 60% of the worldwide cellular population will be "trackable" via an emerging "follow-me Internet."
7. Through 2011, enterprises will waste $100 billion buying the wrong networking technologies and services.
[Gartner]
1. Blogging and community contributors will peak in the first half of 2007. Given the trend in the average life span of a blogger and the current growth rate of blogs, there are already more than 200 million ex-bloggers. Consequently, the peak number of bloggers will be around 100 million at some point in the first half of 2007.
2. Vista will be the last major release of Microsoft Windows. The next generation of operating environments will be more modular and will be updated incrementally. The era of monolithic deployments of software releases is nearing an end. Microsoft will be a visible player in this movement, and the result will be more-flexible updates to Windows and a new focus on quality overall.
3. By 2010, the average total cost of ownership (TCO) of new PCs will fall by 50%. The growing importance and focus on manageability, automation and reliability will provide a welcome means of differentiating PCs in a market that is increasingly commoditised. Many of the manageability and support tools will be broadly available across multiple vendors. However, vendors that can leverage these tools further and can graduate from claims of "goodness" to concrete examples of cost savings will have a market advantage.
4. By 2009, corporate social responsibility (CSR) will be a higher board- and executive-level priority than regulatory compliance. Regulation has become a key issue for government and the corporate world, with the aim of ensuring more-responsible behavior. However, the need for companies to be socially responsible to their employees, customers and shareholders is growing as well. The future will see corporate boards and executives make this social dynamic a more-critical priority.
5. By the end of 2007, 75% of enterprises will be infected with undetected, financially motivated, targeted malware that evaded their traditional perimeter and host defenses. The threat environment is changing — financially motivated, targeted attacks are increasing, and automated malware-generation kits allow simple creation of thousands of variants quickly — but our security processes and technologies haven't kept up.
6. By 2010, 60% of the worldwide cellular population will be "trackable" via an emerging "follow-me Internet." Local regulations have arisen to protect users' privacy, but growing demands for national safety and civil protection are relaxing some of the initial privacy limitations. Marketing incentives will also push users to forgo privacy concerns, and many other scenarios will enable outsiders to track their users.
7. Through 2011, enterprises will waste $100 billion buying the wrong networking technologies and services. Enterprises are missing out on opportunities to build a network that would put them at a competitive advantage. Instead, they follow outdated design practices and collectively will waste at least $100 billion in the next five years.
Editor and Contributor | Martin Lynch
Contributor | Tamlin Magee
Comments
Coincidentally, 6 out of 7 of these groundless predictions are things that Gartner consultants will be able to help you deal with for a large fee.