I have to admit, I've come up short on a successful prediction. At first I liked Nigel's choice of Moore's Law - but after thinking about it, it was not so much a prediction as an extrapolation.
Since Gartner is in the business of technology prediction, I looked there. After signing up for an account to be able to search, I did get some "tidbits". Unfortunately, even the papers on their own self analysis are outrageously priced (4 pages for $95 in one case, 4 pages for $195 in another). Here are two of the papers that looked interesting, and their synopsis:
Gartner Predictions Where We Were Right About the Event, But Wrong About the Timing, 6 December 2007
"Many of our strategic planning assumptions and predictions have described an event correctly, but have been much too optimistic about how quickly it would occur. Here we revisit a few of the more interesting ones."
Yesterday's Security Predictions Re-examined Today, 10 February 2006
"Some information security and privacy segment forecasts missed the mark. Often, excessive optimism concerning the speed of penetration of new technologies was the culprit when predictions came up short."
What pops out at me about the two papers is that the timing seems to be off due to over optimism.
Gartner does have some free papers, most all of them older ones. One that looked promising is:
Gartner Predicts 2006 and Beyond, 14 December 2005
This paper seems to be a compilation of predictions in other papers. Some of the predictions are:
• By 2008, 20 percent of "office" applications will be selected by users themselves — see "Predicts 2006: The HPW Will Influence Users' IT Choices."
• By 2008, search technology will dominate a user-controlled universe — see "Predicts 2006: Media Segments Face Differing, Uneven Futures."
• During 2006, spending on open-source CRM will increase threefold, creating a viable alternative for many organizations — see "Predicts 2006: Market Consolidation Headlines Developments Among Top CRM Software Vendors."
• By 2008, open-source-software solutions will directly compete with closed-source products in all software infrastructure markets (0.8 probability) — see "Predicts 2006: The Effects of Open-Source Software on the IT Software Industry."
I tried to verify these results, but came up empty handed there (I guess you need to pay Gartner to give you the results!). However, since we are in 2008, my gut feel about these predictions is:
• IT departments are still dictating office applications
• I'm not so sure about "user-controlled universe", but search is a dominant technology.
• Since open source CRM usage was probably a very small number, it's easy to imagine three times a very small number.
• I really don't see head to head competition between closed and open source.
and these prodictions were published at the end of 2005 and are wrong two years later (overoptimism again?)
So maybe the "Fortune Sellers" (such as Gartner) really don't get it right (as per the book.)
By the way - the papers referenced here are available at http://www.gartner.com, but you will need an account and will have to search for them (there are no direct links available).
5 comments:
Dave,
Like to get your thoughts on open source SW usage. It's been my experience that with open source you sort of get what you pay for at times. I've used some great open source tools with good results, but often I find them lacking in the documentation area, so the time invested in the learning curve (installation, configuration, and getting it to do what you require) often exceeds the cost of purchasing the SW with support.
I wonder how many companies evaluate the "cost" of open source in terms of human capital versus closed source sw.
I can't say as I have any expertise in this area, but I almost always have an opinion ;-)
I think open source, with extremely few exceptions, requires some level of computer expertise. The result is that is great for situations where some expertise exists (such as servers, so Apache is popular) but not at all well suited to the general public (a rare exception there is Firefox).
I think support is also an issue. I think most IT departments want more formal support than posting questions to forums.
So basically, I agree with you and I think companies are (for the most part) aware of the total cost of ownership.
I agree it was outright extrapolation but that seems to be a valid prediction method. That, and looking at the weather at this time last year are the two methods that occasionally work.
Nigel
I found quite alot of these prediction aggregations as well. Many of them are similar enough as to make me think that they're copied or at least derived from each other.
I think Nigel is right that extrapolation is a valid prediction method. It seems to me that the word prediction is a fairly broad one with some predictions being backed by sound scientific methodology whereas other "predictions" are formed from off-the-cuff daydreaming. Perhaps a more accurate term for a scientific prediction is a "hypothesis"?
Post a Comment