Who is Business Automation?

Information systems consulting

Expert witness projects

Internet strategy consulting

CEO's Web Review

Have Brooks Hilliard speak at your next meeting

Home

FROM THE EDITOR:

Quotations about the future by baseball legend and philosopher Yogi Berra always come in handy when you're making predictions.  Looking at my 1998 predictions I could use another Yogi-ism: "I ain't in a slump, I just ain't hitting."  Actually, a 40% success rate (see below), on some pretty aggressive picks isn't so bad . . . but before I pick up my trusty old crystal ball for the '99 predictions, take a quick look at where I went right and wrong a year ago:

• At least half of those who use the web regularly will use it to buy products or services in '98.  A winner.  The final results aren't in yet, but a recent survey put the percentage of Internet users who buy at 63%, up from 27% last year.

 
• Microsoft and the Department of Justice will settle their current dispute with another consent decree.  Wrong.  With what appears to be a pretty one-sided trial in process, it's still not too late for a settlement . . . so I still have a long shot chance of pulling this one off (admittedly a bit tardily).

 
• Many top-of-the-line notebook PCs will come standard with wireless or two-way satellite modems for Internet access. Right on!  Not many customers are buying them yet, but nearly every major manufacturer offers cellular modems as an option on its high end notebooks.  The soon-to-be-released "Bluetooth" digital cellular modems will accelerate this trend in 1999.

 
• There will be a major news story involving the recovery of erased or missing computer data.  Nope. There's lots of e-mail evidence in the Microsoft antitrust case, but so far none of it was recovered from deleted records.  I still think supressed but recovered data will make big news somewhere, but I'm not about to stick my neck out with repeat prediction.

 
• Windows 98 will be delivered in '98, but not until quite late in the year.  I was fooled on this one.  Microsoft was very punctual and the release was reasonably solid, too.

• I'M FROM THE COMPETITION AND I'M HERE TO HELP YOU.  At least one major company will be forced to sell to a better-managed competitor when it discovers that its Year 2000 computer problems would bankrupt it otherwise. This phenomenon will become all too common; several minor acquisitions of this type will occur too.

• THEY CAN HARDLY WAIT.  Lots of commercial and government computer shut-downs caused by Y2K TESTING will make the national news.  I'm tempted to say the cure may be worse than the disease, but this isn't true.  Y2K is for real.  I don't believe that life as we know it will come to a screeching halt at the date of the calendar turn, but we're all going to experience a lot of problems and annoyances.

 
• TO QUOTE YOGI AGAIN, "NO ONE GOES THERE ANY MORE, IT'S TOO CROWDED."  Internet-based commerce, which more than doubled in 1998, will more than double again in 1999.   Actually, before long, everyone will go there.  Businesses need to get with the program or fall behind their competitors that do. 

 
• YOU'VE GOT MAIL (and it says "Don't forget to turn the lights off before you go."). The America Online acquisition will not save Netscape, whose products will continue to lose market share. I can't see a scenario where Netscape recovers the market share momentum in lost since the introduction of Windows 95. 

 
• NO, NO, Mr. BILL.  Judge Jackson will rule against Microsoft AND be upheld in all appeals during 1999.  However, some penalties may be reduced by the higher courts.  Microsoft will continue appealing in following years, of course, and could walk away scott free.

• Voice recognition (computers that respond to speech) will finally arrive. 
• There will be a big increase in the use of computer security systems. 
• The speed of data communications will improve by a factor of at least ten.