Revisiting last year’s predictions

We made 13 predictions at this time last year so it’s time to see how we did.

We made 13 predictions at this time last year so it’s time to see how we did. Next week we’ll set our sights on 2003.

• Hewlett-Packard and Compaq merge but the new company is plagued by integration headaches. Half-right. The contested merger went through but integration isn’t as problematic as predicted. User confidence is high. [Breaking H-P news]

• All the regional Bell operating companies will be in the long-distance market by year-end in more than half the states. Right. There are only 14 states where the RBOCs still need 271 approval. [Breaking carrier news]

• The Microsoft suit fades away and the states give up. Bingo. Although Massachusetts and West Virginia refuse to face reality and are pressing on.

• Point products replace network management platforms. Sort of. Frameworks are dead, but point products are not king. Software suites that can be integrated easily are the rage.

• Lucent or Nortel will be acquired. Wrong, but the companies continue to post monumental losses: $11.8 billion for Lucent for 2002 and $3.3 billion for Nortel for the nine months ending Sept. 30.

• Despite increased acceptance of Linux, more open source-specific vendors close shop. Right enough. Some Linux vendors consolidated their efforts by coming out with UnitedLinux, while others refocused.

• Companies are slow to adopt 802.11a 54M bit/sec wireless Ethernet products because handheld devices don’t support it and because of the looming 802.11g standard promises backward compatibility with 802.11b. But introduction of dual 802.11a/b access points might lead to some uptake. Right. 802.11b is still king, although the 802.11a/b combo products arrived too late in the year to drive much change.

• Bluetooth in cell phones and PDAs will drive adoption in other devices. Not at the rate we anticipated. [Latest Bluetooth news]

• ISCSI bounds forward, raising questions about the need for Fibre Channel in storage networks. ISCSI gains ground, but the emergence of 2G bit/sec Fibre Channel ends talk of Ethernet gaining share in storage networks.

• Web services technologies gel, and by year-end companies are using them to build corporate applications. That’s true. However, implementation issues still make it a headache to integrate software from different vendors. [Latest Web services news]

• Employees seeking telework spikes upward. The economy chokes off these efforts, but the telework force still grows slowly.

• Supplier resource management gains big attention. It did indeed. Big outfits such as Wal-Mart now require all suppliers to play along.

• The economy bounces back in the third quarter. Rats.