^[1] So it’s that time of year for holiday cheer and pundits to tempt fate and pontificate.  Here are some very very draft predictions for 2009 in order of most likely to least likely to pan out:

End user predictions

1. Heavy discounting continues for new license. Discounts ^[2] include non-monetary concessions such as training, implementation, integration, and other professional services.
2. SaaS contract terms move from annual terms back to month to month contracts.
3. Single source ERP strategies lose appeal as customers move to contain exposure to vendor lock-in with large ERP vendors.
4. SaaS integration ^[3]becomes a requirement as customers seek hybrid deployment options.
5. Consortium and shared service buying ^[4]move beyond the public sector.
6. Customers with more than 3 ERP systems move to reduce to 3 or less.
7. Custom dev shops extend functionality on PaaS offerings.
8. Software appliance adoption exceeds that of open source.
9. Lack of third party maintenance seen as anti-competitive.  Customers demand options.
10. Industry groups ban together to define web services and business process standards.
11. Open source SaaS software improves open source adoption rates.

Vendor predictions

1. SaaS vendors continue to take market share away from pure on-premise vendors.
2. Intense software discounting in Q4 2008 and Q1/Q2 2009 drives less capitalized vendors to go broke or be acquired.
3. ISV’s battle for ecosystem partners as capital for innovation becomes scarce.
4. Apps vendors torn between building on .NET, delivering their own SaaS offering,  or hosting with another vendor like SFDC.
5. M&A activity ^[5]abounds in Gov Con (i.e. Public sector, Education, Utilities, and Defense verticals) as vendors seek to consolidate around public infrastructure spending.
6. Specialized apps vendors emerge to meet micro-industry niches and many arise from system integrators with software development expertise.
7. System integrators forgo vendor “warnings” and deliver on third party maintenance.
8. A few system integrators will acquire software vendors and drive towards solutions convergence ^[6].
9. Software vendors improve support and maintenance offerings.
10. Large ERP vendors cede the SMB market or acquire for market share presence.
11. Cloud computing remains a 2009 buzzword and every vendor will dilute the meaning till it becomes meaningless.

Your POV.

Send me your view of 2009 and what you think will be hot or not.  What’s the one trend you think will pan out? Feel free to share with me your experience.  You can post here or send me a private email to rwang0@gmail.com.

Copyright © 2008 R Wang. All rights reserved.