Technology Predictions for 2009
Jeff Vance, president of Sandstorm Media, a marketing services firm focused on emerging technology trends, has an article in CIO Update entitled 5 Hot Trends for 2009. This article is the next in his series of predictions as evidence by his article last year entitled 5 Hot Trends for 2008. He begins with an honest critique of his 2008 predictions. I admit I was too eager to find out what was anticipated for this year and so I skipped right to the 2009 predictions. After reading the latest predictions, I confess that my first thoughts were, “Well how good did you do last year?” and so it was easy to find out. Depending on your patience, either order is fine. I’ll give you a brief synopsis of his 2009 predictions and leave it up to you to decide if you agree and need to check his score from last year. For 2009 Vance sees the following unfolding:
1. Major Mergers and Acquisitions: Vance expects some big names to come in and buy at bargain prices. One place to look is in the wireless market-space.
2. Disappointing sales in the mobile market space: The recession will cause consumers to delay purchases of new handsets with all those nonessential features. One business model to watch is pay-as-you-go.
3. Virtualization is a winner in 2009: And the reason is obvious, cost. Seems like the recession plays a big part in most predictions for this year. Quicker ROI and less upfront cost will be the tipping point for most technology winners. Vance sees virtualization marching past the servers and moving to desktops and quite possibly the mobile desktop sector as well.
4. Businesses crack down on social networking: Lack of worker productivity and data leakage are the two main reasons.
5. IT Spending saves the economy: Admittedly this may be too brash of a boast, but look for major IT expenditures to support a fundamentally changed economy due to the global recession. Regulatory agencies will look to data mining in an effort to detect fraud and forestall market collapses.
So what do you think? If you are interested on how well Vance’s 2008 predictions turned out, read the article, (HINT: he wasn’t too far off).
