The Plot Thickens As Disruptive Trends Set To Unfold

The plot is thickening as 2006 comes into view, as many of last year&'s emerging trends rush toward a seemingly inevitable clash with the status quo.

The backdrop to this story is the prospect for solid IT spending. As CRN Research Director John Roberts reports in an economic outlook story, business optimism was on the upswing as the new year approached, signaling the maturing stages of a recovery. The majority of solution providers, too, were looking to accelerate their hiring of technical staff, a sure sign that business is strong and confidence high.

As CRN editors went through the annual exercise of selecting our 20 To Watch trends, technologies, companies and people, there was a high degree of confidence in the selections for 2006. That confidence did not come from a belief that 2006 was going to bring more of the same, but rather from the intuition that many of the emerging trends of last year will achieve firmer footing in 2006.

Indeed, selecting the first of our five top trends to watch, the adoption of managed services, hardly required a crystal ball. The only question is how quickly the industry and the channel will adapt to this multifaceted development in the way technology is sold and maintained.

A number of other 20 To Watch selections also are related to what some have termed the “second coming of the Internet.” We included Google and Adobe among the five companies to follow; Salesforce.com&'s Marc Benioff and Microsoft&'s Ray Ozzie among the people to keep an eye on; AJAX programming and WAN optimization among the five technologies; and software-as-a-service adoption as one of the strongest trends. And, of course, security, storage and open-source developments will also provide plot color in 2006.

How accurate are CRN&'s annual predictions? In an essay at the end of this report, CRN Editor Heather Clancy looks back at last year&'s 20 To Watch selections to assess how they fared in 2005.

The coming year surely will bring some unforeseen twists, but on the whole, the plot seems to be unfolding along a predictable, yet never boring, course.