Well, it’s that time of year again. Retrospectives and predictions abound; people are scurrying ’round talking about the events of 2002 and predicting what will happen in 2003. Since I’m all in favor of a little mad scurrying, I’m going to join in the fun.
I’m a little late out of the gate with this (What can I say? We started celebrating even earlier than Ted), but here are my top five technology predictions for 2003:


5. JBoss moves past 50% marketetshare in the EJB space. This is pretty much a no-brainer. JBoss is free, it works well, it’s got a large and growing number of users, and it’s just nice. I also don’t agree with Ted that EJB will be dead by year’s end, but that’s a different story entirely.

4. A massive shakeout in the CRM space. There’s just too many companies. And far too many of them are still venture-backed and looking for a profit. The combination of shaky finances and Microsoft looming on the horizon is going to cause buyers to pause. And that’s going to start the dominos falling.


3. $300 linux boxes at Walmart (and other low-end retailers) will become the standard system for home users. I honestly think that the introduction of these boxes by mass-market retailers was was the most significant tech news for 2002, and that the significance was mostly missed. Walmart is lowering costs by using linux. And they’re producing PCs which are more than good enough for most applications. This is huge, and along with Apple’s resurgence, signals the re-emergence of Java on the client side.

2. Broadband will hit 5 million new households a quarter. Right now, in the United States, broadband adoption is approximately 1.7 million households per quarter. And it’s growing at a rate of 9% per month. Since the report is from the third quarter, if we just assume the 9% figure holds steady, compounding the 9% monthly gets us to more than 3.5 million new broadband connections in Q4 of 2003. That’s a safe and reasonable prediction. But I’m going to go out on a limb and say that, by Q3 of 2003, as the United States firmly leaves this recession behind, broadband adoption will be skyrocketing.


1. The emergence of P2P strategy and simulation gaming networks. What happens when $300 linux-based servers(#3) can run free enterprise class servers (#5) from the basement using a broadband connection (#2)? And when a significant percentage of them are also running wi-fi networks? In the short run, I’m guessing one hell of a finely detailed version of Axis and Allies. In the long run? The rebirth of the internet.


And that’s it– my top 5 predictions for 2003. I’m finding it a little weird that I didn’t mention XML, web-services, Mozilla, wireless devices, or SDForum. Who would’ve predicted that?

Am I off base? What would you have included here?