Gartner's Top 10 Techs: A Risky Prediction

So, research firm Gartner Group came out with list of top 10 technologies to watch for the next year. The list looks pretty arcane, and it made me wonder: How good is Gartner at this prediction racket? To find out, I thought it would be fun to look at the top 10 list Gartner put out a few years ago.

In April 2004, Gartner posted the list below of 10 impactful technologies for 2005. Let's see how it looks in hindsight:

1. Instant messaging. Hm. Doesn't seem to me that IMs turned into the No. 1 most significant technology in 2005. Well, maybe for high school kids. Even then, Gartner would've looked more insightful if it had listed text messaging instead.

2. WLAN. I had to look this up. I'd forgotten the terminology. It stands for wireless local area network. Ahhhh! Wi-Fi! OK, so, yeah, that belongs here.

3. Taxonomies. What the --? I don't remember anybody then, much less now, having excited conversations about anything called taxonomies.

4. Voice over IP. Pretty big. Seemed more exciting in 2004 than it does now.

5. Software as a service. Actually, it didn't belong on the list then but does belong on the list now. Never quite got going until the past couple of years.

6. Real-time enterprise infrastructure. Again, must be a terminology thing. I think this is what we're now calling virtualization, which also didn't take off until the past couple of years.

7. Utility computing. As in ubiquitous computing, or computing power served up like electricity. Big IBM idea back then. Kind of coming around. Still seems pretty sci-fi.

8. Grid computing. Seems like kind of the same idea as utility computing. Or maybe it's more like cloud computing -- the stuff Amazon is pushing now. If nothing else, Gartner's list shows how quickly terms change and go out of fashion.

9. Network security convergence. No idea what Gartner was talking about with this one.

10. RFID. Still waiting for its day in the sun.

No mention in the list of social networking. Nothing about the rise of smart phones. Nothing about the biggest game-changer of all on the Web: Google's AdSense advertising system. Predicting technology is a tough business.

With that, here is Gartner's top 10 for the next year. We'll see if the firm does any better:

Multicore and hybrid processors
Virtualization and fabric computing
Social networks and social software
Cloud computing and cloud/Web platforms
Web mashups
User Interface
Ubiquitous computing
Contextual computing
Augmented reality
Semantics

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