NOSes /

The power of proper prognostication

By Dave Kearns
Network World, 12/03/01

Because we are on the doorstep to closing out 2001, let me take a moment to wish you all the best of whichever holiday you're celebrating this holiday season (Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Eid Mubarak, Happy New Year, Solstice Greetings, Joyous Kwaanza and - the big one - Happy Texas Day).

For me, its also time to look back to last year's final column and see how well I did with my annual predictions.

There were four predictions:

1) "By this time next year the courts will not yet have finally decided Microsoft's fate (although it's possible that a settlement could end the litigation)."

2) "By this time next year Eric Schmidt will be back at Sun."

3) "New applications will expect that you have a directory in place (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol- or XML-enabled)."

4) "Personal directories for stand-alone machines will emerge that can be integrated with an enterprise or ISP directory when someone joins an organization."

I give myself 2.75 out of 4.

Microsoft vs. the Department of Justice did go to a settlement (1 point); new directory-enabled applications do expect a directory service to already be present (1 point); Eric Schmidt is out at Novell (.5 point) and he is near the old Sun headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. (at Google, .25 point). Only the personal directory prediction hasn't come true - yet. Microsoft's Passport and its .Net MyServices initiative along with Sun's Project Liberty should bring this to fruition by late next year. Maybe that's worth a half-point, bringing my total to 3.25 out 4 - not bad at all. Let's see if Miss Cleo can top that!

For next year, I'm predicting that:

1) Microsoft will have to "go public" with the specification for .Net MyServices, allowing third parties full, free access to the technology.

2) Novell will continue to win honors for NetWare 6 but will ignore that in marketing because "the future is in services" and will see its stock continue to languish with a possible buy-out by the end of 2002.

3) Carly Fiorina will carry the Hewlett-Packard board with her to complete the acquisition of Compaq.

4) The number of Linux servers will continue to eat into Windows' market share while Windows inches up its dominance of the desktop.

Come back in 12 months (well, stick around for 12 months - read the other 25 columns too) and we'll see how well I do.