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|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

It’s 2001. We’re supposed to have a self-supporting space station, a permanent outpost on the moon, and a psychotic computer running a manned mission to the moons of Jupiter. Had we not lost interest, it might have happened. Instead, our interest in cyberspace exceeds our interest in outer space. Am I the only one who thinks something is fundamentally wrong?

Maybe not. According to research performed by an organization called Virtual Society, reported in The Register (www.register.com), there are 28 million ex-web surfers in the United States alone — actual reality appears to be making a comeback.

Quite a few pundits have expounded on the ultimate importance of the Internet, some ascribing to it a level of significance unparalleled since the invention of the printing press. Last year, I challenged that position as being highly exaggerated. It appears I’m not alone.

Yes, with the advent of a new year, it’s time to review old predictions and make new ones. Let’s start with the review:

Prediction: Rather than the gratitude they deserve, the hard-working programmers who prevented a Y2K disaster will mostly receive unemployment.

Result: Pretty much as predicted. Ignorant, self-appointed voices of outrage declaimed the whole Y2K situation as a hoax. Meanwhile the staffing strategy known as “rolling layoffs” — firing programmers with “old” skills while simultaneously recruiting others with needed new ones — has increased in popularity.

Prediction: PCs won’t be replaced by fat network technologies. They also won’t gain much in new functionality, nor will the user interface improve dramatically. They will, however, increase in reliability.

Result: While PC sales are off this year, that’s probably an indicator of economic jitters coupled with market saturation, not abandonment of the platform. Meanwhile, Windows 2000 is “an order of magnitude” more reliable than NT (translation: It has one more to go before it’s as reliable as its competitors). And Apple is, finally, nearly ready to release Mac OS X, which, due to its BSD UNIX core, will be far more stable than prior Mac OS releases.

Prediction: Java won’t turn into the dominant language for all application development. It will find a niche as the mid-tier language of choice in n-tier OO/client/server development projects, and will continue to be used to extend browser functionality. Its performance deficiencies compared to compiled languages will continue to constrain its value.

Result: On target thus far. Java is popular in the mid-tier, nobody has yet released a significant commercial application written in pure Java, and Java continues to be slower than compiled C++. Microsoft’s impending (translation: indefinite release date) of C# and HP’s jump onto the Microsoft.NET bandwagon may further impede Java’s progress. (On the other hand, I’ve predicted failure for the Microsoft.NET scheme — but it doesn’t have to succeed to hamper Java in the marketplace.)

Prediction: Within two years, Java will either be turned over to a standards body or Sun’s Java allies will start to de-emphasize it.

Result: Neither has happened yet. One year to go.

Prediction: A long-shot, that Macromedia will turn its Flash/Shockwave/Director combination into an application development platform.

Result: I have seen an actual application (a sales force automation package) written with Macromedia tools. If nothing else, I’m not wrong yet.

Prediction: Linux will be very successful in as a server technology; far less successful on the desktop.

Result: Linux adoption as a server platform is growing faster than Windows 2000. Linux’s desktop marketshare is still miniscule.

We’ll continue reviewing past predictions next week.

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|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

We need more women in IT.

Now that I’m skating on thin ice, let me explain. When I was a lad, women’s fashions were a big deal. If the designers declared hem lengths were up, most women wore short skirts, acting as if the fashion police would pay a visit.

I still see articles about fashion trends in the paper, but women respond differently now, mostly dressing as they like. We need more women in IT, because while women have learned to ignore fashion trends, I’m not so sure IT has. For example, I just read that while MSPs are becoming a popular strategy, alternatives are cropping up.

MSP, in case you haven’t encountered the term, stands for “Management Service Provider”. It’s a company that will monitor your systems and network for you, fixing problems or at least alerting you to them.

I first ran across the term no more than three months ago. Assume most IT shops ran across it around the same time, from a sales representative sitting in front of the CIO. I doubt many CIOs stood right up and said, “Great idea! I want one, and I want to buy it from you.”

I figure, right about now the early adopters are plowing through responses to their MSP RFPs while they search their souls, making sure they really want to go through with this.

Yet according to someone in the trade press, undoubtedly quoting some analyst or other from one of the research services, MSPs are becoming a popular strategy, yet alternatives are cropping up.

ASPs preceded MSPs in the trend-mill. The original application service providers could only have appealed to small startups. Yet like a weather balloon, with very little mass but a big cross-section, ASPs were huge blobs on the IT radar screen. Most CIOs I talk to on the subject snort, pointing out that (1) IT has been integrated into the heart of their companies’ processes and culture; (2) their systems are heavily customized for their particular situations; (3) increasingly, they’re depending on tight integration of their systems to accomplish their companies’ business strategies; and (4) what happens if the ASP … generally a venture-backed startup with negative earnings … goes away?

(This last one is a big issue: One CEO recounted an 11-week SAP implementation — the result of Pandesic’s undignified withdrawal from the fray. You’d think that between them Intel and SAP could have managed to keep Pandesic running long enough to protect their customers, wouldn’t you?)

It isn’t just ASPs and MSPs either. Thin clients (which really are fat networks, as has been pointed out in this space many times) preceded them as a trend declared in advance of market acceptance. In fact, pundits now proclaim us to be in the post-PC era despite the PC’s near ubiquity on the desktop and growing … not shrinking … penetration of the home market.

This is the current trend in trends: It’s a trend when a market analyst, desperate to be the first to spot the Next Big Thing, declares it to be a trend, not when the market follows along. Market analysts have become prescriptive rather than descriptive — a dangerous practice that pollutes the discipline, putting them on a par with fashion designers. But women have learned to ignore the designers and wear what’s comfortable and looks good on them.

We need more women in IT.

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