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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).

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First I would like to define what we mean by Unified Communications (“UC”).  Unified Communications encompasses email, instant messaging, texting, phones, and other networking and mobility applications.  In short Unified Communications “ … lets users access people and resources, no matter the location or communication channel, spurring productivity and boosting business processes at an economical cost.”  For an in-depth discussion on this topic see UC Will Prove Challenging to Buyers And Sellers by Judy Mottl.

Initially SMB’s have found it a daunting task to try and pull all these various applications together into one cohesive platform.  The lack of funds and the lack of familiarity with these tools have hindered their move to UC.  The familiarity issue is evaporating as more people are using these communication tools in their non-work life and begin to demand these tools in the workplace.  For further discussion on the capabilities and uses of the newest wireless devices and the coming of the Mobile Web see the following posts in this blog:

• Blackberry Bold RIMs Next 3G High Speed Wireless Handset

• 4G and The Mobile Web: WiMAX v LTE

SaaS may be the way that SMB’s can overcome the budgetary constraints as well as the integration problems that have acted as a barrier for these enterprises.  SaaS provides a faster deployment and the right provider can pull all the telephony tools and applications together into one unified and interconnected unit.  Judy Mottl has written an excellent article that details in the ins and outs for those SMB’s considering this next step into UC.  In her article SaaS Best Path for SMB Unified Communications: Service strategy lets small companies enjoy technology benefits without the headaches she interviews Simon Edwards, UC project director, British Telecom (“BT”), who cautions not to get locked into one particular platform:

"SMBs have to make sure they stick to an agnostic platform," said Edwards, adding that the best approach is an open standards platform that allows emerging technologies from different tool makers

Mottl concludes her article with a quote from Mat Taylor, a senior software architect with BT:

"The ability to get things done faster, get workers more engaged in business scenario, provide better customer service, are all big productivity wins that benefit the bottom line"

For more on the coming of age of handheld devices for the UC revolution see the following posts in this blog:

• Future of Wireless Devices

• SAP Sapphire 2008

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