Who pays for prognoses like this? According to Forrester Research, the next 16-year development cycle in IT won't bring new big bangs but consolidation of well-known technologies, the "Internet everywhere". That means, service-oriented architecture (SOA), business-process management, and mobile systems will merge into "component business applications and social networking". Garnished with a bunch of new acronyms (DBA (always thought this is a DB Admin), MWM, IW etc.) they quickly create new "trends".

And who will be the driving forces behind that? Exactly, the well-known suspects IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP.Can it get more boring than that?

Where are the answers for our privacy concerns, the security technologies for protecting against criminals and an ever data-hungry state? What about the recent advances in robotics and their meanings to society, including the military complex? Whenever I'm reading about predictions made by these couch-potatoes I only can read "business" and "consumer". Leave me alone with studies like this! (Source)