Byrne Tony Byrne

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Looking ahead to 2009 -- and evaluating 2008

16-Dec-2008

Tags: Digital and Media Asset Management, Document Management (ECM), E-mail Archiving and Management, Enterprise Collaboration & Social Software, Enterprise Search, Evaluating SharePoint, Web Analytics, Web Content and Experience Management, Building Business Case, Marketplace at Large, Selecting Technology

Today we released our annual predictions for 2009 (full article / press release / video).

Which begs the question: how did we do last year? (See the December 2007 article.) Let's look back at each of our 2008 predictions.

Archiving becomes a prime focus for ECM vendors
Definitely -- in particular for archiving SharePoint sites.

Google will make a bid to become the World's Content Repository
Not quite, although they did make a bid to become the World's Application Platform, which will get them to Content Repository eventually...

MOSS enters the valley of disappointment
I'd say yes, especially beyond North America, although "skepticism" might be a more apt term than disappointment.

Return of the buyers' market
Absolutely. And it will return with greater force in 2009.

Web 2.0 exhaustion
Yes and no. The term continues to subside; the concept continues to thrive.

Social Software vendor collision
Definitely. Every Tom, Dick, and Portal Vendor thinks they can do this.

Facebook backlash in the enterprise
Not really. Some enterprises still ban it; many more are looking to exploit it. We see greater reluctance to embrace outside North America, though.

Security and Identity Management trump functionality for buyers
Not sure. Functionality seems as important as ever.

Finally bridging web analytics and online marketing
Yep. Not all the spans are complete, but many customers are crossing.

Search is dead....Not!
Search definitely came alive last year, and will again in 2009 too.

Productization of Search Platforms
Yes, and we have the Google Search Appliance to thank.

We'll have 12 new predictions next year
Not a tough one to meet....;-)

So, your tally may differ, but by my count, we came in at about 75% (9 of 12) correct. Not great, but not bad.

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