Just when you think it is safe

Living in Florida, you know how unpredictable hurricane tracks can be. Hurricanes change course every few minutes. Hurricane season started here last week and we watch for them nervously and constantly.

I was thinking about unpredictability in two technology markets this week.

I was reading about how Canada has become much more expensive as a vacation destination for Americans. The Canadian "loonie" has gone up almost 40% against the US dollar in the last 4 years. How does that impact "near shoring"? In fact how does that affect offshoring to other countries as the dollar continues to weaken?

Second, we kinda accept the premise that SaaS from the likes of salesforce.com and Google hurts incumbent vendors like Microsoft and SAP. But how about the collateral damage? If they just need a cheap terminal for SaaS, will people continue to pay a premium for  Macs or HP's high end PCs? What about impact on IT staff who will not be needed to do constant application upgrades and maintenance?

As with hurricanes, the track in technology markets is unpredictable. You can assign a Gartner probability of 0.7 to that.