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Tony Byrne

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How did our 2009 predictions fare?

16-Dec-2009

Tags: Component Content Management, Digital and Media Asset Management, Document Management (ECM), E-mail Archiving and Management, Enterprise Collaboration & Social Software, Enterprise Search, Evaluating SharePoint, Portals and Content Integration, Web Analytics, Web Content Management, Asia-Pacific Marketplace, European Marketplace

Yesterday we issued our twelve predictions for 2010. Once again, I'll look back at our 2009 predictions and see how we did. (You can see how we assessed our 2008 predictions here.) The 2009 predictions were:

1. Open source ECM players get an initial boost
Yes, the recession gave them a boost, though smart customers are still asking tough questions about multi-year total cost of ownership.

2. Office14 casts long shadow on SharePoint
Yes, and no. SharePoint 2010 has energized Redmond's consulting channel. The new version is mostly casting a long shadow on 3rd-party SharePoint add-ons and some enterprise procurement teams looking to delay strategic decisions.

3. "Taxonomies are dead. Long live metadata!"
Definitely less interest in complicated, human-maintained hierarchies.

4. Regulatory-compliance concerns reignited
Yes, though somewhat sector-specific.

5. Renewed interest in pro-active e-discovery
Not sure there was a major wave here in 2009. What do you think?

6. SaaS vendors expand offerings
Yes, though perhaps not as much as we predicted. Salesforce has certainly been active.

7. Oracle falls behind in battle for knowledge workers
Yes, but that was an easy one.

8. New emphasis on application search
I think so, but then again, we predict it again this year, albeit with some new twists.

9. Social computing diffuses into the Enterprise
Definitely.

10. Long-awaited consolidation comes to the WCM space
No way. What was I thinking?!?

11. Mobile and multimedia web analytics become key requirements...and disrupters
Multimedia for sure, mobile only half way.

12. Buyers remain in driver’s seat
Yes. This is another easy one. Just remember that vendors don't chase every lead in this economy, either.

So, I give us a cumulative score of 9 out of 12, or pretty much the same average as last year. Maybe .75 is a good co-efficient to apply to our 2010 predictions.