Through a looking glass dimly: tech trends for 2001

The new Millenium starts in earnest this New Year, finally getting the 20th Century behind us and allowing us to get to grips with the 21st. What does the future hold for those of us with feet planted firmly in the IT industry? Who knows. But having written the stuff I have, and from the perspective of being a loud mouth, I feel that I am no less able to pontificate on the future than anyone else. So here without further ado, Alistair's Trends For The Next Millenium, or the next year of it anyway.

Wireless

Wireless has been the non-event of the last 3 or 4 years. Various formats for content provision, competing frequency standards and dubious network coverage have all plagued the platform. 2001 will be no different. While other parts of the world have smaller land masses, hence less investment needed to put in national coverage, the US will persist in being slow to add system coverage, and persist with competing standards that diminish the effect of the investment. It just is not gonna happen.

The PC is Dead... NOT!

The PC is the basis for the vast amount of development and office work in the world, let alone the US, this will ensure its steady use for decades to come, unless something truely revolutionary occurs. There is also a sorely missed point in many businesses, that being: PC's on most peoples desks are still a sizeable chunk of the performance of the servers that are dishing up the data and web pages. While these tools go under utilized because some dolts think they are too hard to use (many Sun devotees are happy with this, of course) it is clear that companies are missing out on a massive opportunity.

Mainframes

These behemoths get more powerful and cheaper each year. They offer spectacular performance in a single box that even a well heeled dot com can afford, or a medium sized retailer. They offer the prospect of staggering performance, single point of service and blissful reliability. The only downside, and it's the one that has hamstrung them for so many years, and allowed the PC to break-in, they still need to be made more accessible. With Linux now running on IBM's biggest boxes, maybe this accessibility issue will fizzle away.

Enterprise Computing

One of these days someone is going to wake to the realization that this is a craze that has run its course. There is no such thing as an enterprise application, there never has been, it was a machination of some late-1960's MIS weenie to protect his job. Today we can see that we build applications at the corporate level for very small teams of people, often only accessing central databases for tiny subsets of data that are summaries of locally held data (simply because the process of summarizing the data is better done in the warehousing apps than locally). ERP is going to have a tough time as the vendors struggle to make sense of all the conflicting requirements coming from individual customers, let alone the raft of obviously crazed ideas coming from the customer base as a whole. This should be evidence enough that there is no single computational need in corporations, but that there are thousands, each of which needs to be addressed individually, probably with custom software that is not hamstrung by vast ineffiecent code libraries. Look to Intranets focused on smaller groups, bringing greater freedom to teams, and also allowing teams to grab and run with needed data - increasing the independance of some groups.

The Web

It is not over yet, nor is it likely to be over anytime soon. Dot coms will rise again, or something similar. The ground is too fertile for anything else, there are just too many ideas out there, and the cost to implement is still remarkably low. Corporations still have not made wide use, or complete use of the options available from the Internet, or Intranets. Companies will continue to blossom offering services in both arenas. The growth of the internet around the world will become still stronger. Its use by companies to purchase goods and services from an ever more diverse geographical area will grow profoundly. Start to think about all those failed dot coms, they failed for some good reasons, but many had great ideas that for lack of capital would have been successful, some of these ideas may start to percolate into a wider industry segments.

Windows 2000

Microsoft will make more inroads this year with Win2000, though it may be 2002 before the big take up appears. This is not unusual. NT took a few years before it hit its stride. As companies replace servers they will likely take on more and more Win2000 product, culminating by this years end in a healthy services market and a doorway to a booming 2002.

Linux

Linux will continue to grow as a platform for deploying applications. The issues faced are those of FUD (Fear / Uncertanty / Doubt). Most corporations have Linux in-house, but just don't know it yet. The appreciation of its use will spread, and the fear cast by the Open Source nature of the product will subside. The biggest issue will remain: how do people or companies make money from something that costs nothing? If no profitable business model arises major IT systems will not be developed on the platform. If a profitable formula can be found, 2001 could start a rapid growth in the uptake of Linux for more than just email and web services in the corporate world.

The Economy

Eeeh! As we exit 2000, it looks like more and more people are focused on the possibility of a recession (the infamous, unspeakable "R" word). The IT industry has been in this position for some months, as usual the rest of the economy is just slow to the party. Historically the IT industry has done well in picking itself up and getting out of these sorts of mess, this being due to the fact that technology tends to be the mechanism most successful companies use to drag their sorry asses out of trouble. 2001 is likely to start of slowly, probably with many lay-offs. I suspect that by Q2 we will see the beginings of a recovery, one that should boost the industry through the year. This will be built on the fact that while many companies will not be growing, they will not be shrinking markedly either, hence the budgets will last (unlike this years Y2K hangover problems) and will likely be used to purchase some of the new systems and applications that have been held up for the past 4 years.

Java

I am no lover of the Java environment (though I work in the field, and feel that the language has a rather elegant syntax), so I am loath to suggest that the language will face a significant rebirth this year - yet have to admit to the feeling. It will also finally dawn on people that the hold Sun has on the language is untenable, the effectiveness of the language is being unduly held back by the lack of understanding Sun has about the environments the product is being used in. Expect to see a new rush into Java training, Java products, and Java hype. When will we realize that cross-platform is a dead horse, and stop flogging it?

New Stuff

• App servers will still be big in 2001.
• PHP looks like it will reach a maturity level for wide adoption
• Broadband use will boom expect more dynamic, visual content (but not from me)
• The command line will be resurgent in code development, unfortuantely
• Hacking is going to blow the doors of cryptography
• Personal Video Conferencing, everyone?
• Home networking will EXPLODE
• ICANN will be found to be brainless, and do 1 internet second on the standards Rodeo Ride