OStatic

Tech Industry Experts Weigh in on Predictions for 2009

The Open Source Alliance (OSA) published its Annual Predictions Survey this week. It serves up the opinions of business leaders about Obama's impact on IT, where they think the technology market is headed, and why it's a bad idea to put projects on hold until the economy turns around.

The survey asked the CEOs of several companies around the world to look ahead at various issues near and dear to the hearts of the people within the tech sector and open source community. Respondents were asked to predict one software winner and loser in the year ahead, and also think about what kinds of business models are likely to emerge in the coming months.

Anthony Gold, VP & GM of Open Source Business at Unisys, says he expects the new presidential administration to favorably impact the IT industry because President Barack Obama clearly understands the importance of technology.

"There is no question that Obama's administration is already having an impact on IT," Gold tells OStatic. "The commitments it has already made to this important area have the industry buzzing. And, frankly, we see his commitment to IT infrastructure as important as the investments his administration suggests they will make in physical infrastructure such as bridges and highways. IT underpins every industry and touches every citizen. I believe much benefit can be gained by working with open source software and open standards, particularly around cost savings and agility. Only with open source and open standards can his vision for IT be realized."

Gold says it's the ongoing need for cost savings and agility that will position Software as a Service (SaaS) as a key emerging technology in the coming year. "More companies will be looking for easily accessible, self-service software that they can pay for as they go - and use anywhere they need. We've already seen the benefits of this model, but in a year where budgets are tight and creativity by business managers is paramount, we expect SaaS to explode," he predicts.

If SaaS is where it's at for enterprise, Brian Gentile, CEO of Jaspersoft, says tools that provide a consistent experience between home and work computing will emerge victorious as winning business models in 2009. Gentile tells OStatic,"We are soon entering an era where 'digital natives' will outnumber 'digital immigrants,' as the baby boomer population retires in larger numbers each year and younger workers replace them. This transition ushers in significant new responsibilities in software development as younger workers' expectations for software behavior is meaningfully different than the older workers' they replace. Couple this demographic shift with the on-going business needs for greater efficiency, reduced costs, and increased productivity and the stage is set for aged, proprietary software architectures to fall quickly out of favor. Clearly, human interface techniques, software interaction models, and methods of accessing software will change dramatically (and have already begun to). The software creators that understand how to deliver simple, compelling, purely web-based user experience will gain traction and those that do not will lose traction.

"In short, gone is the day when a knowledge worker expects to attend several days of training to learn a new software application or tool. Instead, the software must seamlessly fit in to their mental model and methods of working."

Full results of the survey are available on the OSA's Web site or as a PDF download.

• JasperSoft
• osa
• 2009
• predictions
• unisys

by an anonymous user on Jan. 22, 2009

service as a software?

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by Bradley J on Jan. 22, 2009

2009 is a year of many predictions, in technology, industry, economy, and etc. When it comes to financial issues building credit is essential to financial success. A payday loan is one of the few, and they are few, financial services that does not require a credit check. That said, most other financial services do, and the credit bureau that they go to, or combination of them, reports your credit score to them. What a credit bureau does is they compile all the information that would pertain to your credit, like what accounts you have open, what late payments you've made, balances – they also report your employment information, car insurance, you name it. Once the information is compiled, they run it through a mathematical algorithm that determines your score, which may mean that you do not have good credit, but they report that score to the agency that requested it. What gets looked at in determining your score is astounding.

You can read the article yourself entitled "Credit: Part I | Financial Tips from Your Payday Loan Source" on the payday loan money blog at personalmoneystore.com

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by Rigel on Jan. 22, 2009

Hi there anonymous. I was thinking the same thing. It should be Software as a Service.

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by Lisa Hoover on Jan. 22, 2009

Aw, nuts. Fixed now. Catch for the thanks! ;-)

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by 90% Evil on Jan. 22, 2009

Its ironic that you describe saas as the affordable solution. Because it lowers the entry threshold I always thought it was the best way to skin the most wannabes; the successful saas consumers get milked later.

I am omitting all the details so as to not educate scheming know-nothing real estates pimps looking for fresh meat...

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by card carrying liberal on Jan. 22, 2009

"as the baby boomer population retires in larger numbers each year and younger workers replace them"

Apparently this guy is enthusiastic about the BO voter demographic profile. He fails to recognize that having had 2 trillion in retirement wealth wiped out by the W looter regime, the fuds are going to stay at their desk until you pry them away with social workers; life span is also against this flippant conjecturer.

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by an anonymous user on Jan. 22, 2009

@liberal

thanks for going off topic, not noticing that it was a female author, and failing to notice that the housing bubble that burst and took the economy to the cleaners was initiated by presidential order during the Clinton administration.

gah, thanks fro dragging me off topic too.

signed,

Card Carrying Logic User

0 Votes

by Gritt Sucker on Jan. 22, 2009

SaaS, I always thought that in the FOSS world that was better read as "Software as a Science" than a hosted service.

What's the point in giving users control with freedoms in their software if they then just go and throw them away again, buying proprietary web front ends to open source stacks. Where it's worse than having closed formats, you have no data ownership either.

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