1. 2010 Will Be the Year of Mobility Management.  If 2009 was allegedly the year of the smartphone, then I will argue this year will be the year when organizations fully recognize the need for mobility management solutions.  The consumerization of enterprise mobility is a term that I (and others) often used in 2009.  You can thank the iPhone and Android for that.  Now that Santa Claus is resting after a busy week last week, I am sure more than one person found a new smartphone under their tree (or next to their menorah).  More smartphones means that more people will want to access their work email on their new gift - which means CIOs and their IT departments MUST deploy mobility management solutions to ensure the proper levels of security and control.
   
2. Windows Mobile 7 Will Be Released and It Will Be a Success. You heard me first. Just like I said last year that Palm would be the Come Back Kid of 2009, I am saying that our Redmondian friends will be the come back story of 2010.  Microsoft is angry.  They are angry at poorly they are doing in the mobile marketplace and they recognize they basically have only themselves to blame.  History has shown us that making Microsoft angry is usually not a wise thing.  Many "unstoppable" companies have lost to Microsoft in the long run.  I think this time, Microsoft will come back with one heck of a mobile user experience with Windows Mobile 7.  It's going to have a rich user experience, leverage many of the other great tech assets the Company has (including Silverlight, Zune, XBox and OCS) while keeping true to its legacy chops of .NET and full support of Exchange 2010.
   
3. Palm Will Be Acquired. Let me start by saying I love the team at Palm.  I love their devices.  I think they have the best platform out there for mobility.  I want them to not just succeed...I want to see them thrive!  I just don't think they'll be able to do it on their own (unless Bono stops of course his hypocritical association with our friends in Waterloo).  All cynicism aside, I think Palm has a great plan and vision that simply requires more financial, technological and human capital than it can create organically.  A large company with deep pockets could come in and make that happen pretty quickly.  I've said it before, but I'll say it again, I think Cisco would be a very logical acquirer of Palm.  Cisco really has no enterprise mobility strategy, and they also have a history of buying "consumer" companies such as Linksys.  Trust me....this could work.
   
4. Consolidation Will Accelerate in Enterprise Mobility.  This one is, admittedly, a bit of a softball.  However, enterprise mobility - as an industry - has now been a "hot" topic for about five years.  There are many niche players in the market, and it seems as if there's a new company coming out every couple of months.  That's great from an innovation perspective...and certainly speaks to the high growth nature of the sector, but stability needs to come in.  Stability will come from knowing that the vendors will be around in the coming years.  That will only happen through M&A activity.  This past year, we saw a number of companies in the telecom expense management as well as mobile application space get gobbled up by other players.  You'll see more of that this coming year as companies fill out their technology portfolios (think about the converging world of mobility management) and look to dervive greater economies of scale.
   
5. Think About Mobility As A Service.  There.  I did it.  I added another acronym to the technology alphabet soup we already live in.  (For the record, I still believe I was the one who coined the term "the consumerization of enterprise mobility," but I digress).  But in any case, this one (MAAS) makes sense (to me at least).  Mobility - whether consumer or enterprise - is changing at a frenetic pace...a pace that is arguably too fast for companies to be able to handle and manage effectively.  They just want things to work.  Isn't that the whole premise of xAAS?  This is not just about cloud computing or Mobile Cloud Computing.  This is about companies looking to outsource their entire mobility initiatives and having companies provide them all the IT services (and solutions) they need.  Enterprise mobility vendors now have the opportunity to provide that same level of service to companies that they have become accustomed to for hosted email, enterprise apps, etc.
   
6. Bonus prediction. There will be many changes afoot here at Enterprise Mobility Matters in 2010. OK, self serving - for sure.  I will admit and apologize for the derth in postings these last few weeks.  I have been fighting a number of different bugs this month that have knocked me on my behind.  Candidly, this is the first day in recent memory that I have felt well.  That said, I have been working on a number of ideas that will (hopefully) make this an even better site for you to visit on your quest for knowledge in enterprise mobility.  I can't say much more for now, but stay tuned over the coming weeks.  Until then, I promise, the frequency of posting will soon be back to what you are accustomed to from me.

So there you have it:  My predictions for enterprise mobility in 2010.  Agree?  Disagree?  Think I'm on crack? That's what the comments are for...Happy and HEALTHY New Year to you all!