Tech Forecast 2017

I have been writing these forecasts, largely with an emphasis on the data space, since the late 1990s. I do these less to proclaim my own prognostication scores (which run about 70% or so - not bad but not great) and more as an exercise to determine where I personally will be focusing on. In the last eighteen years, I have never found a year that was as filled with uncertainty as 2016 has been (2000 was perhaps the next worst, followed by 2007). These are inflection points in the economy, where trends usually break. For 2017, the political climate will have an impact in a way that is unprecedented on IT, and likely not for the good. However, this has been the season for unexpected results.