My Predictions for 2009: Nothing

Every year I look forward to ‘the prediction season’.  You know it.  It’s that time of year when every expert, pundit, analyst and chatty blogger on the planet decides we need to hear their thoughts on the past year and what they think will happen in the coming year.

There are tons of examples.  I’ve seen predictions about SOA (David Linthicum in Infoworld and Joe McKendrick in ZDNet), IT spending/activity (CapGemini and ComputerWorld), Content Management (CMS Watch), Business Intelligence (Enterprise Systems Journal and Intelligent Enterprise), and of course Web 2.0 (Fast Company).  Gartner even has a Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009 where mashups made their list for the second straight year. 

I admit, even JackBe has played the soothsayer.  Our CTO, John Crupi, did a great job at the end of 2007 with his Web 2.0 predictions for 2008.  And I hope he does it again for 2009.  But I’ve decided to embrace my inner slacker.  I’m predicting nothing.  Literally.  Instead, I’m going to crowdsource the problem to my Mashup Tribe (that includes you).  Where do you think mashups will be in 12 months?

Of course I’m not a heartless taskmaster (in spite of what my son may say).  I have some great source material for you.  JackBe has spent the last 12 months talking with thousands of organizations and individuals about their perspective on mashups.  And we’ve collected their responses to one simple question: Describe the business problem(s) enterprise mashups will address for you.

And in true Web 2.0 style, I’ve published over 1000 responses to this question in a nice mashup widget (we call them ‘mashlets’), which you’ll find below. (On the off chance that your browser has problems loading the Mashlet inside this blog, you can access it directly.)

Loading Mashlet - MashupUseCases2008.Mashlet. Please wait...

Put on your thinking cap and take a look.  The widget has a nice filtering option (look for the 'Input' button), so try searching on common enterprise technologies like 'portal’, ‘soa’, and ‘dashboard’.  But keep an open mind as well.  I think you will be surprised at the broad range of responses.  There's even some funny ones in there.

Then give me your thoughts.  Where do you think mashups will be in 12 months?