InformationWeek

January 5, 1998

A Peek At The Future

The InformationWeek Labs team predicts the key IT developments for the new year

ith each new year come new opportunities to go out on a limb with technology predictions. The InformationWeek Labs staff never passes up a chance to beat the futurists at their own game-and given their records, that's not a major feat. So here are our predictions for 1998:

Enterprise Management
This may be the year system administrators are liberated from the oppression of kludgey tools and configuration nightmares-if users don't stage a wholesale revolt against Big Brother software agents.

Enterprise-class management tools are going to come a little bit closer to pr oviding the Nirvana of centralized, top-to-bottom systems management this year. Web-based technologies will bring the price tag of these solutions down a bit and make them more accessible. Java will emerge as the core of cross-platform systems-management technologies. Sun Microsystems will continue to move toward easing administration of its Solaris operating system through Java utilities.

Management tool vendors will use Java for management agents as well as for management console applications, allowing administrators to handle problems remotely from a browser or thin client with more efficacy. -- Sean Gallagher

Intranets and Internets
This won't be the year when consumers get their big pipes en masse, but we'll likely know by year's end whether xDSL or cable modems hit the mass-market jackpot. The emergence of a standard could jump-start the Internet software market and bring new vigor to IT infrastructure.

On the intranet development front, XML (eXtensible Markup Language) will be a hot ticket as soon as standards are in place that specify the kinds of capabilities XML syntax can offer. This year should see the solidification of the all-important DOM (Document Object Model) as well as XSL (eXtensible Style Language) for style-sheet definitions and XLL (XML Linking Language) for link definitions.

The Net itself, already groaning under the exponential increase of users and services, should see some infrastructure face-lifts, such as the rollout of IPv6 and an increase in the domain name space. These will bring some new choices and interesting challenges to the enterprise.-- Jason Levitt

Groupware
The groupware infrastructure proven last year-intranets, rentable apps and Java-based cross-platform applications-will emerge from its pilot applications this year. A continuing evolution of other technologies will ratchet up the scope of groupware and ma ke it better scaled for the enterprise.

Standards bodies are close enough to finishing specs on calendar and business-card data exchange. With established standards for directories (X.500) and directory access (LDAP), groupware and messaging products will effectively (if not perfectly) intercommunicate.-- Jeff Angus

Networking
Standards for data interchange and interoperability will become increasingly important as networks grow increasingly complex-with video, audio, computer-telephone integration (CTI), groupware, client-server products, E-mail, data mining, and the World Wide Web being added to the basic functionality of file and print services.

There should be major progress in implementing several standards this year, including LDAP2 for directories, IPsec for virtual private networks, Gigabit Ethernet and quality of service for Ethernet, IPv6 as the new standard on the Net, and IMAP as an E-mail standard. -- Logan Harbaugh

Thin-Client Computing
While Java and Windows technologies will clash everywhere, the most fun will be in watching the two mix things up in the world of small, lightweight systems like communications devices, entertainment components, and handheld computers.

Sun Microsystems and other network computer innovators have gone public with plans to extend Java-based thin-client platform specs to the mobile world. Vendors plan to ship JavaOS handhelds, but Microsoft's Windows CE 2.0 is the odds-on favorite in the category and will gain greater momentum by the end of 1998. A mobile JavaOS implementation has little chance of getting any traction by then.

In the meantime, Microsoft will deliver the latest versions of its Visual Studio tools for WinCE. By February, we'll be able to test Microsoft's claim that the WinCE 2.0 versions of its development tools provide an easy transition from Windows 95 and Windows NT. If so, legions of c orporate developers who are expert in Win32 programming could be producing Visual Basic and Java applications that run on Windows CE devices with minimal retraining. --Jeff Jurvis

Office Productivity
Speech will become almost a universal feature across office productivity suites in 1998. IBM's Lotus Development division already provides IBM's ViaVoice technology in a SmartSuite 97 upgrade and Microsoft has announced an investment in speech technology company Lernout & Hauspie.

Some suite vendors say it's time for office productivity software to run within a browser. Both Lotus and Corel Corp. are pursuing this strategy; Lotus will be out of the box first with eSuite in the first part of 1998.

But for PC users, Java will be a bust for implementing a thin-client strategy. And since network computers from the three biggest NC backers-IBM, Sun, and Oracle-are still in the controlled beta stage and none has announced a realistic general release date, even a Pollyanna wouldn't predict a happy future there.

Compatibility among document formats will increase in 1998. Corel is going to take this a step further by ditching proprietary file formats and heading for a more standard format, such as XML.

Which raises the questions: When will you be able to use your standard word processing program to create complex Web pages, with frames, animated pictures, and such? Will the next release of FrontPage use the latest version of Word as its editor? Or vice versa? Expect to see this trend as well from the Big Three. -- Andy Feibus

Database Technology
N-tier database systems will become the norm, rendering the object-relational debate moot. Since most current database activity-validation, for example-will be moved from the database server to a middle-tier server, the database on the back end will become relatively unimportant. This means well-tested, performance-optimized relational database servers can continue and systems can still be cutting-edge with middle-tier tools. So legacy database systems such as VSAM, once destined for the scrap heap, may now survive for some time to come-though the year 2000 problem may take back some of that gain.

Oracle seems to be emphasizing its other divisions, leaving the database product in almost a legacy status. Despite the release of Oracle8 Server, the Redwood Shores, Calif., company seems little interested in capturing market share. This leaves the door open to other competitors willing to aggressively push their database server products. Expect a vendor such as Sybase or IBM to gain a lot of market share in the coming year. -- Tom Stearns

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