In January, when the frosts come and the snow falls, IT analysts get to reflect on what might happen in the coming year. Luckily nobody takes any note of their speculations and calls them to account for it a year later. However IT analysts aren’t financial analysts – few if any people make purchasing decisions on their forward speculations – even if they follow their advice when they buy current products. Anyway, this year I have decided to join the group of IT speculators and suggest 10 things that 2003 may have to offer:

1. 2003 will be the year of Linux server domination. Actually I am probably right about this because 2002 was pretty healthy for Linux anyway and the stats (which always underestimate the amount of Linux in use) when published may suggest that 2002 was also the year of Linux Server domination. Microsoft really has no answer to the lumbering Linux Juggernaut in the server space.
2. 2003 will not be the year of Linux on the Desktop. Don’t get me wrong on this. Linux on the desktop will probably happen and it is getting awfully close. Some corporates are dipping their toe in the water. Sun’s Star Office is doing well and the richness of the Linux PC environment grows. However the Microsoft PC is a standard and standards have momentum. Wait another couple of years for Linux on the desktop.
3. Dell will continue to continue. I can foresee the time when Dell’s impressive domination of hardware manufacture will end. Sometime after 2015, I confidently predict.
4. Oracle will continue to do well in the ASP/outhosting market. Oracle’s success in this area has been remarkable for its rapid growth and the lack of hype surrounding it. It may even be that Larry Ellison hasn’t properly noticed yet, but I doubt it. I think the problem here is that Oracle is just about the only company doing serious business in the ASP space – so everyone concentrates on the message that the ASP market isn’t doing too well.
5. Nokia will enter the PDA market. Nokia has dominated the mobile space but hasn’t properly entered the PDA space. The PDA market has now got active and even Dell has a PDA, but Nokia is the company that could define what the PDA mobile phone is and there is no reason to think that it won’t. Expect it to come to market with a new and fairly compelling device this year.
6. Apple’s “recovery” will continue. Apple just keeps on making good products and in time this will tell. Of course Apple will never get to be the size of Dell or Microsoft but that’s another matter. Apple has come through the worst and it will continue to teach HP the real meaning of the word “innovate”.
7. IBM will not notice the departure of Lou Gerstner. Actually Lou is long gone and already has a book on the market, but the first year of succession normally doesn’t bring much change. In the second year the new supremo normally begins to stamp his authority on his domain. However, Sam Palmisano was, in my opinion, formed by genetic grafting from Lou Gerstner stem cells and thus IBM is unlikely to notice much change under his leadership – which is probably a good thing for IBM customers.
8. 2003 may be the year of XML. OK so “may” is a weasel word. However lots of committees have been doing lots of work trying to enforce XML standards on different business sectors and last year I started to notice a little bit of adoption taking place. Actually there are benefits here so a little bit of adoption will probably lead to a lot of adoption. However it will happen sector by sector.
9. 2003 will not be the year of Web Services. Web Services is currently like sex with aliens, some people say it happens but nobody can furnish any proof. Of course much depends on what you think Web Services is and whether you count linking applications within the corporate network as Web Services (which I don’t). Web Services is hampered by security issues and will happen a lot later than expected because of this. However I can confidently predict that evidence of Web Services will appear before evidence of sex with aliens.
10. Microsoft will announce a technology that improves the usability of PCs. OK this is a wild one, but I’m getting to the end of the list here so I’m running out of ideas. Every year Microsoft invests billions in product development and I know that only a fraction of the cash pile goes into PC usability, but if you keep throwing money at a problem you must one day obscure the problem from view, surely…

OK, so that’s my list. Write to me next year if its completely wrong, telling me how you based your corporate strategy on every word I wrote.