Posey's Tips & Tricks
A Look Back at My 2013 Predictions
Which trends did Brien successfully predict and which ones was he off the mark on?
About a year ago, I wrote about my technology predictions for 2013. Being that the end of the year is upon us, I thought that it might be fun to go back and look at those predictions and see whether or not any of them came to pass.
2013 Will Be the Year of the Tablet
The first prediction that I made in my last blog post of 2012 was that 2013 would be the year of the tablet.
According to IDC PC shipments worldwide are expected to fall about 10.1 percent below that of the previous year. IDC goes on to say that PC shipments are down about 5 percent for the commercial market, as opposed to being down about 15 percent in the consumer market.
While I do not deny the role that Apple- and Android-based devices have played in the PC decline, it is worth noting that in spite of what some have said, Windows is not disappearing. According to IDC, the Windows-based tablet market accounted for less than a million devices in 2011 and grew to just under 7.5 million devices in 2013. This number is expected to grow to 39.3 million devices by 2017.
Big Data
I predicted that "big data analysts" would be highly in demand in 2013. Although I haven't been able to locate any statistics to back up that prediction, Information Management listed data scientists as one of the ten hot IT jobs for 2013. Likewise, Harvard Business Review listed data scientist as the sexiest job of the 21st century.
Data Leakage Prevention
My third prediction for 2013 was that data leakage would become such a pressing issue that there would be a number of startups that would specialize in leak prevention technologies or in somehow reclaiming leaked data.
I have to admit that this prediction didn't come true. Even looking back, I am somewhat surprised that I got this one wrong. There have been a number of situations in the last couple of years in which healthcare organizations have been subject to substantial penalties due to the leakage of patient data.
I still believe that there is a very real need for data leakage protection software. You never know. Maybe that is something that I will get into myself.
Consumer Malware
While my list of 2013 predictions didn't go so far as to predict an iOS virus, I did say that I thought that 2013 would be the year that organizations were going to be taking a long, hard look at their BYOD security strategy.
This prediction is tough to quantify. I've got no way of knowing how many companies took the time to reevaluate their BYOD security. What I can tell you is that BYOD security was definitely a hot topic for the year and some companies have given up on BYOD in favor of CYOD.
For those who are unfamiliar with CYOD, it stands for Choose Your Own Device. The idea is that users can choose from a variety of corporate-issued devices, but the organization doesn't go so far as to allow users to use any and all devices as might be the case with BYOD.
Windows 9
In my list of 2013 predictions I said that we wouldn't see a Windows 9 beta this year, but that Microsoft would fast track Windows 9 development. I also predicted "a major service pack release at some point that offers a newly redesigned user interface".
I will give myself half credit for that one. We didn't see a Windows 8 service pack in 2013, but we did get Windows 8.1. Even though Windows 8.1 didn't give us a major GUI makeover, it did address certain aspects of the GUI.
So How Did I Do?
So how did I do with my predictions? Out of five predictions that I made for the year, I got three and a half right. That's 70 percent for those who are keeping score. Of course when I was in school, scoring 70 percent got you a D-. Maybe I need to do a little better on my 2014 predictions (which you can read next week).
About the Author
Brien Posey is a 22-time Microsoft MVP with decades of IT experience. As a freelance writer, Posey has written thousands of articles and contributed to several dozen books on a wide variety of IT topics. Prior to going freelance, Posey was a CIO for a national chain of hospitals and health care facilities. He has also served as a network administrator for some of the country's largest insurance companies and for the Department of Defense at Fort Knox. In addition to his continued work in IT, Posey has spent the last several years actively training as a commercial scientist-astronaut candidate in preparation to fly on a mission to study polar mesospheric clouds from space. You can follow his spaceflight training on his Web site.