That's the lovely thing about all these prognostications that Gartner continually comes up with: not a single one of them is independently verifiable. Even if some other organisation has the temerity to question these goat-entrail style guesses, they can simply say that they were measuring a different set of attributes - or used some other definitions.

Even if they do turn out to be correct - there is no way that knowing these generalities can be used in any actionable way, by any of the businesses affected.

However, not to be outdone, I am planning to unveil the Pete Index. This is a broad measure of the amount of uncertainty in the IT world. This uncertainty can arise from fear of recession - leading to uncertainty about shrinking markets, or from growth - leading to uncertainty about how to grow your business. The P.I. will also include uncertainty about uncertainty itself - we're not sure what it is that we don't know. I am pleased to announce that the P.I. has increased from it's baseline figure of 1000, to 1002.073 just while I've been writing this piece. This increase is due to the uncertainty in how this posting will end.