I must say that the predictions don't seem to be to far reaching. Maybe using a Crystal Marble instead of a Crystal Ball.
It would be nice if they would follow each of the items listed with a little bit of background or reasoning kind of like this (Statements following the items in parenthesis are simply my additional comments):
We expect IBM Lotus Notes/Domino to continue losing market share to MS Exchange and other players. - This one we simply listed to piss off the Domino Community
Phishing attacks will get worse before they get better. - Hey this is the pattern for a lot of things. You don't usually hear of a lot of things getting better before they get worse.
Blogging will fade away from the corporate world and be considered a consumer tool, no longer a credible source of news. - We say this because it never really made it to the corporate world. (This appears to be a short-sighted prediction to me. I guess it depends on your view of what blogging is and how strong it can be coupled with RSS and Atom feeds.)
Microsoft will speed up development on the next version of Internet Explorer, and release an update before Longhorn - the current plan is to release the next version of IE with Longhorn in 2006. - Because this was already talked about before the new year we figured it would be safe to list. The Longhorn part might be a Longshot.
Microsoft will enter the anti-virus market in a year when the severity of virus attacks will reach an all time high. - Hey they follow the trends. (Some equate Anti-Spyware and Anti-virus together and they bought Giant and released the Beta Anti-Spyware tool and they had a recent update (KB890830), which some would say is anti-virus software, so they met that one. Have you noticed that it seems some people like to interchangeably use the terms Spyware and Anti-Spyware? This makes one have to stop and look at the context of what is being said and what is really meant. Hmm, wonder how this fits in on the MSN side of things. Right now Microsoft offers McAfee Virus Protection with an MSN Premium account. Unless they buy the company or simply license it under a Microsoft name it would seem silly to spend the time on coming up with an Anti-Virus product, although there is money in it.)
Malicious Software Removal Tool - January 2005 (KB890830)
This tool checks your computer for infection by specific, prevalent malicious software (including Blaster, Sasser, and Mydoom) and helps remove any variants found. You should also use an antivirus product to remove other malicious software that may be present. This tool helps maintain your computer, and its appearance does not indicate that your machine is infected with malicious software. After you run this item, you may have to restart your computer.
Biometrics will become the latest trend in security systems, for network access, desktop access, and physical building access. - Hey just as good as any other guess and it gets a lot of play in the press. Besides everyone carries all of the biometric pieces around with them all of the time. You usually don't hear employees say, "Oops, I can't login, I left my finger at home today." (HelpDesk, could you reset my password, I can't remember if it was my finger or my eye?)
Hosted Email providers will see strong growth, as more and more companies look to email as a service, considering the rising costs and complexity of in-house systems. - Having somebody else do the work always sounds good. We could have said hosted email solutions would take market share away from Microsoft and Notes, but we didn't want to reflect Microsoft in a negative light, although it would have been fun to have another dig at the Domino community. (And the hosting sites aren't experiencing the rising costs and complexity? Not sure what one's definition of strong would be, but I would think that companies would go into this cautiously, watching how it works out for those that do. What happens when they want to move providers, or bring it back in-house? What happens when the host has you hooked and raises your cost? What happens when the host can't get something back that you need? What happens when the provider gets caught in a legal case and all of their equipment is seized, including the server, SAN, etc.. that your companies e-mail is on? What happens if your ISP goes belly up or has all of its equipment seized for some reason and you can't get to your e-mail? What happens when the virus of all viruses takes down the Internet for a week, thus loosing your connectivity to your mail?)
Google will introduce an IM client that will do surprisingly well. - There was already talk about this in the forums before the end of the year, so we figured it was a good bet.
IM Management vendors will continue to be the biggest winners in the IM space, as more and more companies will have a need for better IM security, archiving, and retrieval. - Duh, trying to control all of those free clients that are a potential security threat is going to cost you some money and managers are finally realizing that yes their organization is using IM even though they keep telling everyone that it doesn't.
In the email archiving and compliance market, we expect consolidation of features in the form of all-in-one appliance solutions. - We needed this one to make the list actually come out to ten. It is kind of vague and we didn't figure everyone would read this far. We hoped anyone that did might just give a quick puzzled look and move on.
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