Marshall McCulan coined the phrase “the medium is the message”, and if there ever was a medium that had a message, it would be the Internet, and in particular the pastime of blogging. Research company Gartner, which has just issued its key predictions for 2007, is predicting that blogging will peak in the first half of 2007.

The printing press is no longer required

The “message” of blogging is that anyone with a computer, and at least a few brain cells, can be publisher. The blogging platform has changed the economics of who can publish news and opinion, and how the rest of us consume news and opinion. 

According to Gartner, there are already 200 million ex-bloggers - that is people who started a blog and ran out of steam. Contrary to popular opinion, blogging is not a particular easy pastime. It takes real effort and commitment to get a blog started and to keep it going, and it’s no surprise that most people quit.

Taking into account the average lifespan of a blogger, and the current growth rate of blogs, Gartner predicts that there will be around 100 million bloggers at some point in the first six months of 2007.

The other interesting prediction is that Vista will be the last major release of Microsoft Windows. Gartner says that the next generation of operating environments will be more modular and will be updated incrementally:

“The era of monolithic deployments of software releases is nearing an end. Microsoft will be a visible player in this movement, and the result will be more-flexible updates to Windows and a new focus on quality overall.”

That’s a very interesting prediction given that Microsoft’s current business model, to a large part, relies on “monolithic deployments of software releases”. I for one would be very happy not to have to go through the software upgrade cycle.

Gartner’s other predictions for 2007, include:

By 2010, 60 percent of the worldwide cellular population will be “trackable” via an emerging “follow-me Internet.” Local regulations have arisen to protect users’ privacy, but growing demands for national safety and civil protection are relaxing some of the initial privacy limitations. Marketing incentives will also push users to forgo privacy concerns, and many other scenarios will enable outsiders to track their users.

By 2009, corporate social responsibility will be a higher board- and executive-level priority than regulatory compliance. Regulation has become a key issue for government and the corporate world, with the aim of ensuring more-responsible behavior. However, the need for companies to be socially responsible to their employees, customers and shareholders is growing as well. The future will see corporate boards and executives make this social dynamic a more-critical priority.

By the end of 2007, 75 percent of enterprises will be infected with undetected, financially motivated, targeted malware that evaded their traditional perimeter and host defenses. The threat environment is changing — financially motivated, targeted attacks are increasing, and automated malware-generation kits allow simple creation of thousands of variants quickly — but our security processes and technologies haven’t kept up.

By 2010, the average total cost of ownership (TCO) of new PCs will fall by 50 percent. The growing importance and focus on manageability, automation and reliability will provide a welcome means of differentiating PCs in a market that is increasingly commoditized. Many of the manageability and support tools will be broadly available across multiple vendors. However, vendors that can leverage these tools further and can graduate from claims of “goodness” to concrete examples of cost savings will have a market advantage.

Through 2009, market share for the top 10 IT outsourcers will decline to 40.0 percent (from 43.5 percent now), equaling a revenue shift of $5.4 billion. As market share declines, some key outsourcing vendors will cease to exist in their current named form. The reduced number of large contracts, increased amount of competition and reduction in contract sizes have placed great pressure on outsourcers, which will have to “sink or swim” based on support for selective outsourcing and disciplined multisourcing competencies.
Only one Asia/Pacific-based service provider will make the global top 20 through 2010. The number of global players in consulting that come from Asia is relatively small. This will limit the ability of the Asian juggernaut to grow revenue streams rapidly and become global leaders.
Through 2011, enterprises will waste $100 billion buying the wrong networking technologies and services. Enterprises are missing out on opportunities to build a network that would put them at a competitive advantage. Instead, they follow outdated design practices and collectively will waste at least $100 billion in the next five years.
By 2008, nearly 50 percent of data centers worldwide will lack the necessary power and cooling capacity to support high-density equipment. With higher densities of processors proliferating, problems in this area continue to grow. Although the power and cooling challenge of high-density computer equipment will persist in the short term, a convergence of innovative technologies will begin to mitigate the problem by 2010.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, December 14th, 2006 at 11:51 am under Internet, Technology, Web2.0.

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