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Ah, December, the time of year when tech firms predict next year. For the fourth year running, Technology Futures is offering a list of what is sees as the trends for the coming year. "These predictions differ from our normal activities where TFI traditionally looks further out into the future," company officials note.

 

Commenting on the list, author David Smith, Vice President TFI, says 2008 will be "a dynamic year impacted by possible actions such as the potential financial instability including the threat of recession, changes in the geopolitical environment, and further changes to the landscape of business."

The company is proffering its Top 19 Technology Trends for 2008, a refreshing number for such a list, and obviously it's too long to incorporate here but it's available on their Web site. What concerns us here is… well, okay, their #1 is "Green, Green, Green." During 2008, "every thing turns green. The greening of information technology started in 2007, but will pick up speed and spread to all parts of both the corporate and consumer domains. This includes efforts at conserving power, more efficient procedures, less travel, and many other activities to save resources."

 

And #2 is "Peer-to-peer rebrands itself and becomes an ad-supported connection between consumers, business, and content producers." But what really concerns us is their #3 prediction, that the IT industry's key players "dramatically increase the migration of core offerings."

 

CRM, other applications, business intelligence, storage, imaging and the like "will migrate to online delivery models as a key method for profitably serving high-growth markets, particularly small and medium-sized businesses," firm officials think. "Web mashups that combine data from more than one source into one integrated tool will be the dominant model for the creation of composite enterprise applications and will peak around 2012."

 

They also say "Mashup technologies will evolve significantly over the next five years, and application leaders must take this evolution into account when evaluating the impact of mashups and in formulating an enterprise mashup strategy."

Prediction #19? "2008 will be the toughest year ever for CIOs." We'll see.

 

Interestingly, the firm sees China as being even more of a disruptive factor. "China will continue to have its way with other nations' critical information," the firm said, adding that "In 2007, we learned that electronic attacks emanating from the Chinese military had penetrated the German Chancellery, England's Whitehall, and the Pentagon. 2008 will see a continuance of such attacks by China on Western governments and industry."

 

As a corollary, then, the firm predicts that the worldwide economy will be volatile during the next few years. "Water will become a driver much like oil was in the 20th century. The movement to a cashless society will increase, as digital imaging will progress to the point it will defeat most anti-counterfeiting systems. China will exchange its U.S. currencies for Euros and other currencies, which will cause the dollar to decrease in value and adversely impact the stock market."