Network World — Welcome to the New Year!

"So," my esteemed editor asked. "What's on the horizon for the next 12 months?" Hmmm, quite the question. After considerable cogitation, charging and discharging of the flux capacitors, and examining more chicken entrails than a man should ever have to, I have come up with the following predictions.

Slideshow: End-of-the-Decade Technology Quiz

Generally, this will be the year of recovery, the year of realigning that which needs aligning, along with cleaning up what's dirty, polishing up what's tarnished, primping up what's, er, unprimped, and pimping up that which is unpimped. In short, generally getting ourselves out of the morass of negativity and gloom that was 2009.

All the signs are there that the general economy will slowly gather momentum over 2010 but confidence is going to be erratic. On the other hand, this will most likely be a good year for IT because, as I am wont to point out, all business is now information technology. Those organizations that have responsive and effective IT organizations will be competitive in 2010. Those that don't will risk becoming historical footnotes.

<digression>As a side note on the topic of economics, I don't subscribe to the views of Igor Panarin who has for some years been forecasting the disintegration of the USA into six parts starting in late June 2010. He claims this will be a result of "a civil war triggered by mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation."

I don't know about you but I don't see any signs of a mass immigration issue and the economy is looking better, although, now I think about it, I'll give Panarin the moral degradation ... have you watched Fox News recently? But I don't think one out of three is going to give the West Coast to the Chinese as Panarin predicts.</digression>

Anyway, here are my other predictions, in no particular order ...

1. Over next year, the whole idea of User Experience (UX) will become increasingly recognized as a crucial and central element of online communication and application design. This focus is a good thing because sound UX design makes for greater usability and acceptability. When the users understand the software and don't have to come and bug us every five minutes with "how do I ...?" it makes IT's life much easier.

2. Data volumes from all IT operations, online and in-house, will continue to expand at astronomical rates and the speed at which business analytics can be executed will be crucial to business success. While Web analytics will be the sexier segment, it will be the data warehouse analytics where the big bucks -- according to IBM (IBM), something around $105 billion -- will be spent in 2010. If you're spending, expect great value. If you're selling, be prepared to make deals.

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