Have you ever wanted to go back in time to review all of
those confident pundit predictions to determine which came true and which, well…
didn't? I think about this especially at this time of year when all the web sites and IT publications start printing their annual wrap up articles with
10 Bold Predictions for 2010... or
5 Things That Will Change Next Year!
Just recently I’ve been cleaning out the closet in my home office again. This
is where I regularly store those treasures that I think I might want to refer
to again, but usually never do. So the clutter starts to grow and grow and
eventually, if I ever want to step inside the closet ever again (or save anything new in there), I have to go through that “stuff”
and get rid of some of it.
As I started the process I noticed many interesting things
lurking about. How about IBM redbooks from the DB2 V2 era (yes, mainframe DB2)?
And there were some ancient manuals on VSAM and the IBM Repository and tons of
proceedings books from industry conferences. If you have attended any conferences
lately you know that they no longer hand out printed materials (and many no
longer even hand out CDs). So, yes, these proceedings “books” are from the early
90s (from IDUG, the DB2 Technical Conference, Gartner Symposium, and even Database
and Client/Server World). I’m a packrat, so I’m going to keep these relics as mementos
of days gone by… one day I may box them up and put them away in the attic
instead of keeping them nearby though, but that would take too much time right
now.
As I continued my excavation I came upon some old magazines,
as well as research reports from industry analyst groups. These proved to be
quite entertaining. As I read through some of this material I became even more
adamant that it never pays to believe prognosticators -- even professional
ones. Sure, reading this stuff when it is current can be helpful as a guide and
maybe to give you something to think about… but it is not very wise to base
your future plans on the predictions in these magazines and research reports.
I’m going to point out some predictions that went awry. I
will not attribute them to any particular publication or analyst group, though.
(Because I don’t want to get into any online shouting matches or arguments.)
Suffice it to say, that all of the following come from respected sources. Here
are some of my favorites:
From an analyst/pundit in 1996
commenting on the DBMS market “Illustra now
gives Informix a significant lead…Oracle’s greater market share and financial
resources should compensate for its technical handicaps. No other vendor seems
likely to mount a credible challenge to these two.” (My thoughts: At least
this guy didn’t forget about IBM, errr, wait-a-minute, I mean at least this guy
didn’t put Sybase in his top two.)
On Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)
from an analyst group in 1995 “(Our group)
believes there are interoperability issues looming that may or may not be
serious issues to users, depending on whether highly automatic message-delivery
assurance, security, and traffic management are important at this early stage.”
(My thoughts: Hmmm. Now what should I do with this sage advice? I “may or
may not” ignore it.)
A Y2K survey from a financial analyst
in 1997 “Only 6 percent had made no plans
in this area (Y2K)” (My thoughts: Here is an example where using this survey
as input we might’ve been able to say, hey, looks like most everyone will fix
this problem and we won’t need to build bunkers in Wyoming in case the world
falls apart.)
A 1997 magazine on the future of the
PC “Your PC will become an appliance, not making nearly the
same demands on your time as today’s PCs. (My thoughts: This guy did NOT
anticipate Vista… and I bet he has had to buy a new PC since then requiring a re-installation
of everything. And oh, wait-a-minute, it is my Mom calling me because her CD
drive no longer works and she can’t find anything she downloads. Yes, it is all
so easy now.)
I’m going to stop here for the time-being. But as I keep on
cleaning out my closet I will post additional blog entries on this topic. So
keep on checking back in.