eWeek Labs Picks Best Technology Bets

Resource Library:

Technology waits for no man—or stalled economy. On the next few pages, eWeek Labs analysts take a look at the products and technologies that will be most compelling in the next year. Henry Baltazar notes that "convergence" and "interoperability" will be the watchwords for storage and business continuity as storage management software finally comes to the fore and emerging specs allow industrywide cooperation. Web services were all the buzz this year but will become a reality next, notes Jim Rapoza. And some of the most significant Web services applications may show up in the mobile space, "maximizing the potential of mobile computing," says Jason Brooks. Three little letters—X-M-L—spell big changes for the database market, according to Timothy Dyck, who hopes that a much-needed XML query language standard will be OKd in 2003. Other predictions—as noted by the Labs John Taschek, Peter Coffee, Cameron Sturdevant and Francis Chu—include, respectively, big differences in customer relationship management software, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Hammer success, lots of security product failures and more blades.