Jeremy Zawodny recently posted his thoughts on 2004 and beyond.

I’ve been tempted to write one of these for a while, but have been holding off because I keep asking myself “who am I to write about this’.

Well, I still don’t know who I am, but I see no reason to hold back either ;-)

While Jeremy sees many technical innovations, I actually imagine a much larger business shakeup.

A few key areas that I’m going to predict:

Open Source

Open Source Business has become my staple of late. There simply aren’t enough books about it. Seriously. I can only find 2 good ones. But, I honestly believe OS will hit mainstream businesses with surprising force.

For some businesses this will be the simply sharing of information among employees (a la “knowledge empowerment” of the 90s). For others this will be opening up processes to peer groups. For others this will be individual projects being done in an open manner. And for others it will be ‘sponsoring’ Open Source projects. Whatever it is, the next 2-3 years will see the adoption of open principles across several fronts.

Increasing accountability, visibility, trust and relationship with customers, the fact of the matter is that Open Source will become a strength, not a weakness. I can’t say if this will be the end of things like patents, I really don’t think so, but it will certainly make for interesting changes.

Commoditization

I honestly expect software to become more and more commoditized. Not just software though, consumer electronics, peripherals and even services will become increasingly commoditized. Companies like Sony and Apple will have their work cut out for them to ensure that the public continues to buy ‘the image’ over ‘the product’. After all, the iPod is really just a harddrive on wheels. Anyone could make it. It’s the image consumers are buying, at least for now.

We’ve been seeing this process as Dell and Microsoft enter various new markets, but it will only continue to happen. We’re seeing the beginnings of it with things like Instant Companies (subscription required).

Blogs

Blogs will become more and more mainstream. It’s already happening with major news sources quoting blogs, some blogs becoming more popular than news sources, etc. It will only continue to happen.

Companies will increasingly open their businesses up by allowing key individuals to start blogs. The most popular and most useful will, of course, be those that don’t require corporate oversight. Where a blog can be sponsored by, but not run by, a company.

A perfect example would be if Adobe (or Macromedia or AliasWavefront or … or … or …) were to have their lead designers / developers start blogs about the next generation of software. Designers would flock. Daily.

Companies will continue to adopt this relationship and trust-building tool. Expect several new high-quality books that examine this purely from the marketing and ‘mindshare’ position.

Speaking of which, expect ‘mindshare’ to become a buzzword next year, or at least something like it. I’ve found myself using it during several talks, in spite of myself, and found people understood what I meant.

Consolidation

The whole Oracle / PeopleSoft thing was just the beginning. Expect more. Don’t expect Microsoft to use much of their warchest for this. If they do, expect an outcry. If they don’t, expect an outcry.

I could easily see areas such as gaming, consumer electronics, storage, networking, wireless networking and inventory control (RFID in particular) experiencing this. Other areas could include anything Homeland Security related and trends-related companies.

Fun fun, add your own :)