December 20th, 2008

Postdictions for 2008

Posted by Paul Murphy @ 12:15 am

Categories: Applications, Database Management, Development, Enterprise Policy, General, Linux, Productivity, Sun, Vistabulations

Tags: Wintel, Information Technology, Microsoft Corp., Dollar Devaluation, Linux, E-voting, Open Source, Operating Systems, Software, Government

On December 31st of 2007 I said that:

1. The IT word for 2008 will, I think, be either “continuation” or “consolidation” as existing trends become more obvious to more people and little new enters the market.

2. SCO .. will continue to dominate direction setting in the Linux community - and until or unless IBM gets its collective head straight on the issue and cleans house, the polarization this case has led to will continue to undermine Linux legitimacy.
3. the number one Linux influencer for the year may turn out [to be a battle for control of the OLPC desktop as Microsoft tries to kill its Gelernter derived "Lifestreams" interface model"]
4. Sun will get “Victoria Falls” out on schedule and is somewhat more likely than not to get its “Rock” chip sets out by late summer, early fall because I think the changes now expected to delay “Rock” until early to mid 2009 are ultimately more tied to commercial/strategic considerations than technical ones.
5. Microsoft’s inability to transcend simple minded x86 programming will continue to drive wintel back to the gigahertz race while delaying the move to PPC - with HP taking a bigger hit from dollar devaluation than Dell and the acceleration of existing trends to an iPhone/Sun Ray style of computing becoming more and more obvious as Microsoft’s inertia grinds down its wintel partners.
6. Microsoft’s organizational limitations will mean that we’ll probably see lots of press hype about advanced Intel products like a 32 core wafer running on micro-watts, but no significant products.
7. Key management trends from last year will continue - although I think we’re starting to see some push-back against the absurdities of PC/mainframe style virtualization and no-one will figure out what SOA means in 2008 either. What will happen is that the emphasis on “security” will get worse as more auditors train up on 1920s data processing control models and company legal departments get heavily into the act.
8. The outsourcing reversals and repatriations going on now will, I think, continue; largely because they’re driven from oil related dollar devaluation. As a result I expect to see a minor gold rush in IT hiring -and that spells good news for American IT workers as increasing numbers of legal visa holders choose to go home and more and more illegals either get deported or take pre-emptive flight.
9. France, because of its commitment to nuclear power and political response to the riots two years ago, may become the hot spot for IT investment in the EU.
10. what’s going to happen with respect to time sharing and social networks won’t be anything new - existing trends will merely continue to strengthen the former while weakening the latter, at least until (or while) current structures get replaced.
11. it’s an election year in the United States and you’d think that would lead to some focus on E-voting - but it won’t, at least this year. What’s going on is that existing e-voting technologies are absurdly vulnerable and everybody knows it, but the democrats prosecute nearly all election related lawsuits in the United States and they liked the results last time, so nothing’s changed since - and nothing will unless the Republicans win big in November.

So in the finest tradition of objective reviews I barely thought better of using “Benedictions” in today’s title - but then, well; here’s my take on each - and your invitation to argue.

1. “continuation” or “consolidation”

   Yep.

2. SCO .. will continue to dominate direction setting in the Linux

   No sign of IBM getting its act together - the Novel thing is an utter absurdity that may kill off SCO while leaving all claims against IBM intact for the next actor. I don’t think a worse outcome for Linux is possible.

3. the number one Linux influencer for the year may turn out [to be a battle for control of the OLPC desktop as Microsoft tries to kill its Gelernter derived "Lifestreams" interface model"]

   It’s not clear who pulled what strings or how much it cost - but Microsoft won, and OLPC’s interface is functionally dead.

4. Sun will get “Victoria Falls” out on schedule and is somewhat more likely than not to get its “Rock” chip sets out by late summer, early fall

   The 5240 owns its markets, but notice the hedge on “Rock”? The Nots held their position.

5. Microsoft’s inability to transcend simple minded x86 programming will continue to drive wintel back to the gigahertz race while delaying the move to PPC

   The reality is more confused than that: Intel focused existing product advancement on gigahertz and its marketing on pre-selling its me-too follow-ons to AMD - while Microsoft continued to demonstrate its determined inability to “think PPC” via the 6 core 3.2Ghz Xenon in the X360.

   Oddly enough, Microsoft adopted Intel’s marketing strategy in the fall: selling Vista by hyping its promises for Windows 7.

6. with HP taking a bigger hit from dollar devaluation than Dell

   Yep - but Dell took a bigger hit from its own managerial ossification.

7. the acceleration of existing trends to an iPhone/Sun Ray style of computing becoming more and more obvious as Microsoft’s inertia grinds down its wintel partners.

   Yep.

8. Microsoft’s organizational limitations will mean that we’ll probably see lots of press hype about advanced Intel products like a 32 core wafer running on micro-watts, but no significant products

   Yep.

9. Key management trends from last year will continue - although I think we’re starting to see some push-back against the absurdities of PC/mainframe style virtualization and no-one will figure out what SOA means in 2008 either. What will happen is that the emphasis on “security” will get worse as more auditors train up on 1920s data processing control models and company legal departments get heavily into the act.

   Yep.

10. The outsourcing reversals and repatriations going on now will, I think, continue; largely because they’re driven from oil related dollar devaluation. As a result I expect to see a minor gold rush in IT hiring -and that spells good news for American IT workers as increasing numbers of legal visa holders choose to go home and more and more illegals either get deported or take pre-emptive flight.

    This was turning out spot on, until about July/August when governments in China and the mid east realized that their candidate could actually win this time and the dominoes started to fall on Wall Street.

11. France, because of its commitment to nuclear power and political response to the riots two years ago, may become the hot spot for IT investment in the EU.

    Yep.

12. what’s going to happen with respect to time sharing and social networks won’t be anything new

    I think this one was wrong - because one side effect of the current depression is that the absence of an actual business basis for many of the bigger ponzis is now becoming important.

13. it’s an election year in the United States and you’d think that would lead to some focus on E-voting - but it won’t, at least this year. What’s going on is that existing e-voting technologies are absurdly vulnerable and everybody knows it, but the Democrats prosecute nearly all election related lawsuits in the United States and they liked the results last time, so nothing’s changed since - and nothing will unless the Republicans win big in November.

    Yep - For example, the obvious contradiction between the near average total vote counts and long voting lineups following a huge advance vote in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and the DC area has yet to trigger anything remotely resembling official interest.

So, overall? I’d say pretty good - but I’m uncomfortably reminded of those back page, small print, announcements you see in newspapers under titles like “Officers cleared in shooting” whose English translation is “the police, having investigated the police, declare the police to have acted heroically.”?

So over to you…