Will the record companies vanquish their peer-to-peer foes? Is there life left in the PC market? Are we ever going to get the 3G and wireless services we have been promised for so long? Will we ever buy software again?
One group of people keen to double guess the ebbs and flows of the next 12 months, are Australia's small but growing number of venture capitalists. When you are in control of millions of dollars it is important to have a clear idea of where the IT industry is headed.
While he is not overly confident regarding the future of Australian IT start-ups, Phillip Wing executive director of Sydney-based Technology Venture Partners is keeping a close eye on hybrid technologies.
"We are going to see the start of the fusion of IT/Biotech and Nanotech opportunities in business," Wing said.
What is most interesting about this prediction is that Nanotechnology is seriously being discussed in the business community. It was initially greeted with much interest when physicist Richard Feynman first started espousing his ideas regarding the possibilities of miniaturisation in 1959. As time wore on--and the practical difficulties associated with Nanotech became clearer--cynicism gradually won over the initial enthusiasm.
After all, how on earth do you create machines to work on an atomic level, when the atoms making up the machines themselves are as large as the atoms they are supposedly working on? However, an increased understanding of molecules, such as organic dendrimers, has revived interest in bio-nanotechnology. Important breakthroughs, such as the first room temperature single electron transistor, may also provoke the coming together of IT and realistic nanotechnology, in 2002. In fact, molecular transistors, DNA computing and nanowire switches have become serious points for discussion in development labs across the world.
As always, the extent to which Australia can position itself to participate in this new wave of development has yet to be seen.
Wing is also predicting an improvement in the quality and calibre of IT investments on offer in Australia, foreseeing a return to the "lost art of the Business Case", and an increasingly pivotal role for Commercialisation in the Australian IT industry.
If industry pundits are right, 2002 will also become the year of the business-focussed Internet. Citrix Systems Asia Pacific managing director, Nabeel Youakim predicts that the Net will become even more pervasive, as Web-based applications become the norm.
As well as an increasing role in day to day corporate transactions, Marty Gauvin, CEO of Hostworks, is predicting the emergence on the intelligent Internet, which recognises the user and automatically connects them to the applications they wish to access.
"More businesses will put their mainstream business applications online to retain and attract customers," Gauvin said. "The Internet has gone through a phase of people seeing it as different, so it's now just another way of doing what you've always done, but more efficiently."
Not only is the internet going to become more pervasive, and more practical--it should also become easier to access.
John Robinson, country manager for CPU manufacturer AMD in Australia and New Zealand, is looking forward to an increased emphasis on mobile platforms and technologies.
"We are expecting the mobile market to continue to grow faster than the desktop market, and we are responding by shifting the emphasis through our OEMs," Robinson said.
As portable computers are becoming smaller and more multifunctional, and mobile devices are becoming larger and more multifunctional, chances are 802.11b wireless LANs will end up running alongside Bluetooth standard wireless connectivity, forcing integrators to improve their understanding of how to allow both to work together without interfering with each other.
Oh yes--and we will gradually get 2.5G and then 3G mobile coverage, allowing us to check where there are parking spaces as we drive into the city. But if you are nervously awaiting 3G rollouts you are in the minority, and will probably be waiting a while longer. Although they are preparing the infrastructure and the devices, the companies involved are more than a little nervous about who will end up with a piece of the 3G pie.
According to Kier Preedy, acting managing director for Optus Mobile, 3G is not a base of 'build and they will come', as carriers are searching for an application based migration path for consumers.
"The pay-per-byte approach for GPRS is similar to Internet pricing and is the first step towards moving consumers into the new world of mobile data," Preedy said.
While mobile access providers are deciding how they are going to make the services attractive enough to actually make a profit from them, the rest of the IT market is expecting things to pick up after a long, slow market freeze that will have lasted two years--if it continues through to April.
Scott McKinnel, regional manager for RSA Security Australia and New Zealand, echoes popular industry belief, saying that he expects things to get better in 2002, as companies returning to spending--however cautiously. Hostworks' Gauvin is similarly opined, predicting an improvement in IT spending by late 2002. Both McKinnel and Gauvin, however, predict continued consolidation amongst IT companies, in Australia and abroad.
As for the ongoing struggle on behalf of record companies to bring peer-to-peer music swapping under control, it looks all but lost. How it will affect the music industry in the long term remains to be seen.
Music industry analyst, Phil Tripp, predicts the industry will continue to attempt to sue file swapping sites right out of existence, and thus continue to fight a losing battle.
As enterprising young bands harness the Internet to reach global audiences, however, the inevitable increase in broadband connectivity in Australia will lead to some interesting trends in terms of media usage over the Internet.
Greater competition within the broadband industry should lead to a significant improvement in the pricing of broadband, with ISPs ramping up the provision of DSL connections.
The ongoing struggle between Australia's beloved incumbent telco and the rest of the broadband industry--as mediated by the ACCC, is no doubt set to continue.
