Safe Bets for 2008

That time of the year again. Resolutions to be made and broken by January 31 and predictions to be made and laughed at by February 15 .. so here's mine...in honor of the new Southwest boarding process I assigned them an A1 for most likely, all the way down to C3 for least likely to get a comfortable seat.

Apple: Every major presidential campaign will approach Apple about its TV campaign and ask to brand its candidate as Mac, and leading competitor as PC. Three will even request the PC character be made female = A1

AT&T:  Will seek immunity for having shared with the NSA all the new places consumers create on its Seamless World website. Dan Brown is supposed to be writing a book on how the anagrams will help surveillance = C2

Gartner: will give up on its probabilities and will adopt this SW model of IT boarding priorities. Of course, it will also give up on magic quadrants and put these predictions on a 3 x 3 table - A,B,C as rows and 1,2,3 as columns = C3

Google: (and) Facebook will disclose that a suspected spam group declared the whole world as their "friend" and give rise to a new term, Pokespam = B3

HP: Its most popular product will be consulting time with its execs to help companies trim their own IT budget - particularly their HP spend = C1

IBM: In recognition of its growing international employee base - predominantly male and young, IBM will be renamed International Boyz II Men = B1

Microsoft : Will redefine "mashup" by letting its various diverse software, device, gaming units finally collaborate with each other. An early product - "Zune Bob. Sharepoint." Unlike the cartoon namesake, it will offer mobile, GPS, fileserver, MP3, pineapple juice and more = A3

Oracle: As with cars, the Feds will require it to put a domestic content sticker on its products ...domestic as in how much was written in its labs versus acquired = A3

SAP: Tired of slow customer uptake on upgrades, it roll out its SaaS offering, BBD but will discourage incumbent customers from qualifying. Rumor has it the algorithms come from Vegas slot machines to ensure less than 2% will qualify = B2

Verizon: will roll out Any Apps, Any Device and move away from its 24 month customer contracts. Appropriately, it will also change its slogan to - Can You Pay Me Now? =  A2

Of course, take these and several quarters to the local Starbucks and you may, just may get a cup of coffee...but you have plenty of other predictions and wishlists on the web to fall back on. Here are some from fellow EIs - Dennis Howlett, Jeff Nolan, Anshu Sharma and our newest member, Charlie Bess of EDS.

PS - Observant readers will notice I did not disclose my New Year's resolution. I put it in anagrams on the AT&T site above -)