1011 Fact-Based Guesses for 2025
“The future bears a resemblance to the past, only more so.”
- Faith Popcorn (of course)
Out here in the mountains, the days – well, the days really aren’t. As the TV tunes to the morning market opening, some of us still can’t see if that lump in the back yard is a deer or coyote, requiring more attention than typical with the fuzzy creatures and morning routines. It’s great standing out here when the Fahrenheit scale is in the teens. We’re also realizing that our last calendar item of the day will end after twilight. Thus, Prediction 0000: I predict there will be no changes to Daylight Savings to give we Northerners a glimpse of the sun on either side of a workday and provide cheer to our lives.
As the days become shorter and the holidays near, it’s the season to posit about the year ahead, so here we go. The C-suites are restless. Execution has not been great in technology this year, even though the market has responded well. That pressure to keep the market momentum could be the final straw to improve the execution through observation. That will mean increases in costs in some areas, which will result in the push to decrease costs elsewhere. Thus:
Prediction 0001: The back-to-the-office push will ramp significantly, with many tech and tech-centered companies reverting to five days of cubicle labor. This will mirror the general global industry. Time to wear shoes, folks. Additionally, there will be a frankly unsurprising lack of movement of the employee base who have been threatening to switch jobs for a couple years if they have to go back.
Prediction 0010: The general tech industry trend will be to do more with less. Lack-of-skilled-workforce claims aside, the industry will contract globally with the influx of graduating and new employees, displacing significant experience that is still slow to adapt to new methodologies. We, the former planners, will tell you that it’s not about the people, it’s about the people required to do the job.
Corollary to the above, not a prediction, just an observation: M&A in the tech industry will be very noisy. Second Corollary to the above, the vocal global momentum on a four-day work week will grow with no action
Corollary that leads to an actual Prediction 0011: Global industry will see a strong resurgence in the workspace client market. Hey, The Management might be cheap at heart, but they know that cool office schwag gets people back to said offices. This is as much a software trend as it is a hardware one, created by new PCs and tablets, wireless infrastructure, collaboration tools, and the like. It will even extend to furniture and commercial real-estate pricing. New cubes and new whiteboards for the peeps! West Coast commute times will be hardest hit.
Oddly enough, however, this rising tide won’t lift all newer and heavier boats. Prediction 0100: By about mid-year, the market will hammer more than a few companies who admit that the monetization of their new AI services (is AIaaS in use yet? If not, consider it ™-d here) is significantly lower than expected. Basic economics applies: while demand is high, supply is, well, over-supplied. This won’t (yet) extend to the high-end hardware providers. It also will not decrease the momentum in software and services to create newer and shinier AI tools, perhaps to the derision of the analyst crowds. Hey, live by the, “We have AI!” die by the, “We have AI!”
Corollary Prediction 0101: The AI services that buck the trend will be client-based. This will create an opportunity for continued AI development on single-system images that will have a longer-term impact on hardware; a topic for a future predictions column. The real result will be a problem that will start, but not totally come to the fore next year. While clients individually will have some cool new search and usability tools, clients as a whole will have fragmented individual services. Productivity results will vary. Literally. No back-end services will resolve this next year, though bets are that there will be speculation on how to do so in those shiny new conference rooms.
A few more off the cuff:
Prediction 0110: Not only will there be more announced government investment in technology infrastructure globally, there will be SIGNIFICANTLY more announced government investment in technology infrastructure globally.
Prediction 0111: Tariffs will not have an impact on the movement of global technology, though some companies will probably try to blame them in an earnings report around Q4.
Prediction 1000: Hardware innovation in the datacenter will continue to be in a stall. The industry as a whole will admit it’s up against a wall that’s a conglomeration of power consumption, bandwidth limitations, delayed products, and the intransigence of one or two major players to participate in general solutions. It’ll get fixed, just not next year.
Prediction 1001: Noted above. There will be at least two positive M&A or fragmentation deals in the tech industry next year. We mean big ones, in the multi-billions.
Prediction 1010: There will also be at least one pretty grim security breach that will create a good couple months of debate on whether the as-a-service industry has fundamental flaws.
Prediction 1011: We will review all of these predictions next year. Yer’ Humble Author (YHA) is not afraid of admitting mistakes.
And proof that this entire column was conceived to deliver a geek joke: There was no way we were going to take this to 1111 predictions. That would give this column an F. Have a good set of holidays, everyone.
“The future bears a resemblance to the past, only more so.”
- Faith Popcorn (of course)
Out here in the mountains, the days – well, the days really aren’t. As the TV tunes to the morning market opening, some of us still can’t see if that lump in the back yard is a deer or coyote, requiring more attention than typical with the fuzzy creatures and morning routines. It’s great standing out here when the Fahrenheit scale is in the teens. We’re also realizing that our last calendar item of the day will end after twilight. Thus, Prediction 0000: I predict there will be no changes to Daylight Savings to give we Northerners a glimpse of the sun on either side of a workday and provide cheer to our lives.
As the days become shorter and the holidays near, it’s the season to posit about the year ahead, so here we go. The C-suites are restless. Execution has not been great in technology this year, even though the market has responded well. That pressure to keep the market momentum could be the final straw to improve the execution through observation. That will mean increases in costs in some areas, which will result in the push to decrease costs elsewhere. Thus:
Prediction 0001: The back-to-the-office push will ramp significantly, with many tech and tech-centered companies reverting to five days of cubicle labor. This will mirror the general global industry. Time to wear shoes, folks. Additionally, there will be a frankly unsurprising lack of movement of the employee base who have been threatening to switch jobs for a couple years if they have to go back.
Prediction 0010: The general tech industry trend will be to do more with less. Lack-of-skilled-workforce claims aside, the industry will contract globally with the influx of graduating and new employees, displacing significant experience that is still slow to adapt to new methodologies. We, the former planners, will tell you that it’s not about the people, it’s about the people required to do the job.
Corollary to the above, not a prediction, just an observation: M&A in the tech industry will be very noisy. Second Corollary to the above, the vocal global momentum on a four-day work week will grow with no action
Corollary that leads to an actual Prediction 0011: Global industry will see a strong resurgence in the workspace client market. Hey, The Management might be cheap at heart, but they know that cool office schwag gets people back to said offices. This is as much a software trend as it is a hardware one, created by new PCs and tablets, wireless infrastructure, collaboration tools, and the like. It will even extend to furniture and commercial real-estate pricing. New cubes and new whiteboards for the peeps! West Coast commute times will be hardest hit.
Oddly enough, however, this rising tide won’t lift all newer and heavier boats. Prediction 0100: By about mid-year, the market will hammer more than a few companies who admit that the monetization of their new AI services (is AIaaS in use yet? If not, consider it ™-d here) is significantly lower than expected. Basic economics applies: while demand is high, supply is, well, over-supplied. This won’t (yet) extend to the high-end hardware providers. It also will not decrease the momentum in software and services to create newer and shinier AI tools, perhaps to the derision of the analyst crowds. Hey, live by the, “We have AI!” die by the, “We have AI!”
Corollary Prediction 0101: The AI services that buck the trend will be client-based. This will create an opportunity for continued AI development on single-system images that will have a longer-term impact on hardware; a topic for a future predictions column. The real result will be a problem that will start, but not totally come to the fore next year. While clients individually will have some cool new search and usability tools, clients as a whole will have fragmented individual services. Productivity results will vary. Literally. No back-end services will resolve this next year, though bets are that there will be speculation on how to do so in those shiny new conference rooms.
A few more off the cuff:
Prediction 0110: Not only will there be more announced government investment in technology infrastructure globally, there will be SIGNIFICANTLY more announced government investment in technology infrastructure globally.
Prediction 0111: Tariffs will not have an impact on the movement of global technology, though some companies will probably try to blame them in an earnings report around Q4.
Prediction 1000: Hardware innovation in the datacenter will continue to be in a stall. The industry as a whole will admit it’s up against a wall that’s a conglomeration of power consumption, bandwidth limitations, delayed products, and the intransigence of one or two major players to participate in general solutions. It’ll get fixed, just not next year.
Prediction 1001: Noted above. There will be at least two positive M&A or fragmentation deals in the tech industry next year. We mean big ones, in the multi-billions.
Prediction 1010: There will also be at least one pretty grim security breach that will create a good couple months of debate on whether the as-a-service industry has fundamental flaws.
Prediction 1011: We will review all of these predictions next year. Yer’ Humble Author (YHA) is not afraid of admitting mistakes.
And proof that this entire column was conceived to deliver a geek joke: There was no way we were going to take this to 1111 predictions. That would give this column an F. Have a good set of holidays, everyone.
