HorizonWatching

NVCA: Venture Capital 2010 Predictions

The National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) is out with its 2010 predictions, and the tone is cautiously optimistic.  The NVCA recently released its Venture View 2010, the annual predictions survey.  The NVCA survey was conducted from November 30 – December 8, 2009 and includes responses from more than 325 venture capitalists across the United States. 

1. 2010 Investment: More Dollars into More Companies.  Sixty-three percent of all respondents expect venture investment dollar levels to remain the same or increase from 2009 with 44 percent forecasting a level between $21-25 billion.
2. Clean Technology Continues to Garner Optimism.   Clean Technology is the industry where most VCs predict growth with 54 percent forecasting higher investment levels in 2010.
3. Web Investments.   Nearly half of respondents expect Web investments to increase in 2010, with 15% betting on a decrease. 
4. More Venture Dollars to Flow to Asia.   A majority of respondents believe that there will be more investment in Asia with 70 percent of VCs anticipating growth in China-based investments and 58 percent seeing greater investment levels in India in 2010.
5. Later Stage Investment Predicted to Increase.  According the survey, most VCs expect the Growth Equity stage of development to increase with 55 percent of all respondents predicting increased investment there in 2010.
6. Improving Exit Signs.   74% of the respondents believe there will be more than 20 IPOs next year with the average forecasted IPO volume at 26.3 offerings. Only 10 percent of VCs
   predict more than 50 IPOs.
7. A Contracting Industry.  An overwhelming percentage of VCs (90 percent) predict that the number of venture capital firms will decline over the next five years

More information

• Press Release:  Venture Capitalists’ Predictions for 2010 - Press Release
• Quotes:  Quotes
• Presentation:  Presentation
• Video:  Mark Heesen, the association's president, discusses the predictions with CNBC.  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/34443843#34443843

Forrester: Five Topics Will Drive Forrester’s IT Leadership Research in 2010

Forrester recently released a list of topics that will drive it’s 2010 CIO research content.  The list was revealed in a blog post written by Sharyn Leaver, a Forrester Vice President who leads Forrester's research into IT leadership and CIO issues.  The five main 2010 CIO research topic areas for Forrester are 

1. Future IT trends & innovations. CIOs need heIp identifying the key emerging technologies that should impact their planning and investment.

2. IT talent management. CIOs are very interested in current and future IT process, org design, culture, and leadership best practices.

3. Benchmarking data (spending, staffing, leadership best practices). IT budget benchmarks continue to be a hot topic for CIOs.

4. IT governance & metrics. CIOs continue to press for best practices that drive a culture of performance and value.

5. Marketing of IT.  CIOs continue to work to perfect their methods for communicating IT value and activities.

You can read Sharyn’s full post at “CIOs Spoke, We Listened - Research Focus For 2010”

Forrester: Five Advanced Analytics Predictions For 2010

I came across a 2010 trends list for business analytics at Forrester Research’s blog for Business Process & Applications Professionals.  The blog post was written by James Kobielus, a senior analyst at Forrester who researches and writes on data warehousing, predictive analytics, and data mining.

James came up with six trends that will shape advanced analytics in the year to come.

1. Self-service operational BI puts information workers in driver’s seat
2. User-friendly predictive modeling comes to the information workplace
3. Advanced analytics sinks deep roots in the data warehouse
4. Social network analysis bring powerful predictive analysis to the online economy
5. Low-cost data warehousing delivers fast analytics to the midmarket
6. Data warehousing virtualizing into the cloud

You can read the full post at http://blogs.forrester.com/business_process/2009/12/advanced-analytics-predictions-for-2010.html

seomoz: 8 Predictions for Search Engine Optimization in 2010

Over the last year, I’ve grown more interested in Search Engine Optimization.  It appears to be a mix of art and science. 

As I am watching for 2010 predictions and trends information, a recent post from seomoz’s CEO Rand Fishkin caught my eye.  In 2009, Rand co-authored the Art of SEO from O'Reilly Media and was named among the 30 Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs Under 30 by BusinessWeek. 

The title of Rand’s post is 8 Predictions for SEO in 2010.  Here’s Rand’s list:

1. This Real-Time Search Thing is Outta Here
2. Twitter's "Link Graph" is the Real Deal
3. Personalized Search is Here to Stay
4. It's Going to Be a Two-Engine, 80/20 World
5. Site Explorer & Linkdomain will Disappear
6. SEO Spending Will Rise Dramatically
7. 2010 is the Year of Conversion Rate Optimization
8. More Queries will Send Less Traffic

The post 8 Predictions for SEO in 2010 provides a bunch of detail on each of the 8 predictions.  I suggest you check it out.

Yankee Group: 2010 Predictions...From Crisis Comes Opportunity

Earlier this week Yankee Group released their report “From Crisis Comes Opportunity: Yankee Group's 2010 Predictions” and held a webcast where they presented their list of Top 2010 predictions.

Yankee points out that the economic crisis in 2009 proved a major obstacle for consumers, enterprises and network builders, and each has had to evolve to survive.   While we’ve been through some tough times, the changes from 2009 will create new opportunities all ecosystems, especially in the areas of cord-cutting, devices, cloud computing and network innovation.

The Yankee Group 2010 predictions are:

1. Cord-cutting will double yet again in 2010. Consumers will continue to drop land-line phone service in favor of mobile, and mobile broadband replacement will accelerate.
2. The bell tolls for device subsidies. Lower operator profits will prompt many new no-subsidy, no-contract plans from major network operators.
3. Netbooks fall from grace. While netbooks won the battle for consumers’ hearts in 2009, they will ultimately lose the war, as notebooks will take on similar form factors and similar prices without such drastic compromises in processing power.
4. Consumers drive more than 50 percent of enterprise smartphone purchases. Rampant consumerization of IT continues with the majority of wireless devices used for business purposes being purchased by employees themselves.
5. Chrome OS powers a new class of Anywhere devices. Google’s browser-based OS won’t be a PC killer, but it will power a new range of must-have consumer devices.
6. Cloudy IT sparks demand for clear management tools. One in three businesses will invest in a new class of cloud-based IT service management (ITSM) tools to manage hybrid IT infrastructures of physical and virtual assets.
7. Upstart upsets the equipment vendor applecart. As LTE strategies are aggressively pursued in North America, Huawei will jump the Pacific and take an early lead as the predominant LTE equipment supplier.
8. Enterprise trust lifts telcos to the top of the cloud. Service outages from Amazon, Google and others made clear that many cloud services aren’t yet up to par. Telcos will become trusted intermediaries between disparate cloud environments, offering service delivery, SLAs, federation, orchestration, security and more.
9. Network innovation well runs dry. The telecommunications industry has long tapped start-ups and IPOs for innovation, but with venture funding on the steep decline, vendors will awaken to the fact that the start-up pipeline is broken.
10. Telcos unite behind infrastructure sharing. Led by European trailblazers, sharing of both active and passive network assets will become the de facto business model for efficient telcos in both developed and emerging markets.
11. U.S. network neutrality rules have domino effect worldwide. Decisions from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission will reverberate globally, and service providers will be forced to become more transparent about internal traffic management practices and their effects on end-users.

I’m embedding the Yankee Webcast:  2010 Predictions below. The webcast is about an hour long.  Slides are located here: slides (pdf).

Yankee Group 2010 Predictions

View more documents from Yankee Group.

Landor: 2010 Trends Forecast - Market trends and their impact on brands

Landor Associates is a strategic brand consulting and design firm with 23 offices around the globe.  It recently released a 2010 Trends Forecast and I thought I would share it with you here.

The forecast provides perspectives from nine of Landor’s lead brand experts in the various industry domains that Landor focuses on.  Here is a summary of the individual perspectives. 

1. Financial Services:  Dramatic shifts give every financial services brand reasons to rethink its relationships with key audiences.  Those that focus on core needs and genuine client experience rather than conventional marketing tactics will emerge stronger in 2010.   Read more here
2. Social Media:  The social web take the spotlight as we learn to filter noise and concentrate on connections.  Read more here
3. Airlines:  The airline industry has changes on the horizon.  Tourists are taking control of their travel to an unprecedented degree.  Read more here
4. Design:  The challenge for forward-thinking designers is to provide flexibility as well as meaning to strengthen the connection between brand and consumer, the link between design and what it represents.  Read more here
5. Green:  Will 2010 be the year of the green car—and will sustainability save Detroit?  Read more here
6. Consumer Spending:  Brands that can capitalize on the pent-up demand while offering real value and even a little bit of joy into the bargain should do well.    Read more here
7. Corporate Social Responsibility:  2010 will be marked by reinvention. A new model for social responsibility will emerge, one that aligns public good and business strategy with brand values. Read more here
8. Hospitality:  These are difficult times for the hospitality industry, with increased scrutiny on value and the fear that any broken promises will be revealed instantly online.   Read more here
9. Food and Beverage:  Brands must learn to approach marketing from the customers’ viewpoint, highlighting the buying criteria important to them.  Read more here

You can download a complete 12 page PDF file of the whole report at http://www.landor.com/pdfs/k9/Landor_Trends10_11Dec09.pdf

IHS Global Insights: Top 10 Economic Predictions for 2010

In it's annual economic predictions list for 2010r, IHS Global Insight (www.ihsglobalinsight.com), says the U.S and world economies have emerged from recession, and the recovery process has begun. 

Unfortunately, for most developed economies, this just does not feel like a recovery yet.  While there are reasons to believe (policy stimulus, improved financial conditions, and pent-up demand), there are reasons to disbelieve (rising unemployment rates, lingering hangovers from housing bubbles and the financial crisis, and the likely winding down of fiscal stimulus). 

IHS says global GDP will grow only 2.8 percent in 2010, well below the 3.5 – 4.0 percent trend rate of growth for the world economy.  As expected, IHS says that most emerging markets, particularly Asia, will outpace the developed economies next year.  Here’s the list of Top 10 predictions.

1. The U.S recovery will start slowly.
2. Europe and Japan will rebound even more slowly than the U.S.
3. Most emerging markets – especially in Asia – will outpace developed economies.
4. Interest rates in the G-8 economies will remain very low.
5. Fiscal stimulus will begin to ease.
6. Commodity prices will move sideways.
7. Inflation will (mostly) not be a problem.
8. After improving for a while, global imbalances will worsen again.
9. The dollar may strengthen a little, but it is on a downward glide path.
10. The risk of a “hard W” is still uncomfortably high.

Here’s a video of IHS Chief Economist Nariman Behravesh delivering the top 10 list.

For more information, access the press release IHS Top 10 Economic Predictions for 2010: Emerging Markets Will Outpace Developed Economies -

IDC: Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) Top Ten 2010 Predictions

“In 2010, it will be the organization that is able to transform itself to effectively partner with complimentary industries, enable its sales force to sell across multiple business units, and finally create flexible pricing and delivery models that will come out on top.”  - Simon Piff, director, Enterprise Infrastructure, IDC Asia/Pacific.

IDC has published their list of 2010 predictions for the Asia Pacific region excluding Japan.  In publishing the list, IDC says that two themes will dominate events in the IT and telecommunications markets in 2010:  recovery and transformation.   In 2010 IDC says we should expect modest growth to return to IT and telecommunications spending.  While IDC does not anticipate spending levels to return to levels that we saw before the economic crisis , opportunities do exist.

IDC points out that economic crisis we have seen over the last year has resulted in a shift by businesses to a more customer-centric decision-making process when determining new corporate initiatives.  With that has been an emphasis on customer-driven analytics, Web 2.0 and other social media components. 

With that as background, here are IDC’s 2010 top 10 predictions for the AP marketplace (excluding Japan).

1. The Maturing Cloud Will Need Five 9 Service-Level Agreements and Enterprise-Grade Cloud Services
2. Business Analytics Will Emerge as a Key Technology Area
3. Enterprise Use of Social Media Will Increase
4. Converged Fabric and Evolving Datacenter Will be Centerpieces of Transformation
5. Evolutions of SaaS to Kaas: It Will be all About Business Process Transformation
6. Smartphones in Emerging Markets Will Rise
7. Converged Hardware Will Herald the Dawn of the Enterprise Alliance
8. Chargeback 3.0 Will Receive Renewed Interest from the CFO
9. Intelligent X Will Emerge: Building a Smarter and More Measurable World
10. Machine To Machine Interaction Will Get More Traction

The full report Asia/Pacific (Excluding Japan) 2010 Top 10 Predictions   http://www.idc.com/research/viewtoc.jsp?containerId=AP381114S

Fortune: 4 Tech Trends To Watch

Fortune Magazine recently published an article, 4 tech trends to watch by Michael V. Copeland, a senior writer.  The premise for the article is to help investors find companies to invest in by advising them to find the companies best positioned to execute on massive shifts in the way consumers and businesses use technology.

With that piece of advice in hand, the article provides a discussion on four key technology trends that we should monitor.

1. On-demand software.  Software as a service = software delivered over the internet = the wave of the future.
2. The rise of the smartphone.   Smartphones are replacing traditional handsets.  Those companies controlling the smartphone ecosystem will have a huge advantage.
3. Data, data, everywhere.  The companies that can capture, store, manage, and make sense of the growing volume of data are going to be sitting pretty in the coming decade
4. Electricity gets smart.  Our electric grid needs an overhaul if it is to become smarter.

Check out the full article for more discussion and analysis of companies to watch http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/04/technology/tech_stocks.fortune/index.htm

eMarketer.com: Seven Media Predictions for 2010 from eMarketer's CEO

eMarketer is out with some predictions for 2010.  The article, written by Geoff Ramsey, CEO and Co-Founder of eMarketer, focuses on trends in advertising, media, and marketing. Here’s the seven predictions.

1. During 2010, as US ad budgets crack open just a little, look for an accelerated migration of ad dollars from traditional to digital media.
2. Even post-recession, aggregate media dollars will fail to return to former levels.
3. Media consumption will continue to explode, becoming more distributed, personalized, and contextualized.
4. Traditional advertising will  play a smaller role as paid content and hybrid models emerge.
5. Advertising on social networks will never attract a large share of marketers’ ad dollars. Social marketing works best when it’s earned, not paid for.
6. Marketers will be increasingly willing to trade off reach for deeper engagement.
7. The classic interruption/disruption model of advertising will erode, if not fade away.

eMarketer, with its articles, charts and analysis, is a good source to validate media based trends   More information on each of these seven predictions can be found at Geoff Ramsey’s post at Seven Predictions for 2010 from eMarketer’s CEO