Taking the Guesswork Out of Technology Predictions

It’s that time of year again. As the calendar turns to 2019, technology analysts and pundits everywhere will be peering into their crystal balls, hoping to figure out what trends and technologies will be important in the coming year.

As someone who has been in the technology pundit and analyst game for a long time now, I’ve had my share of hits and misses when it comes to predictions. I’ve done my best, leveraging my expertise, experience, insider info, and a lot of gut instinct. However, in the end, all of my predictions were simply best guesses.

But what if there was a way to base these predictions on something more concrete? What if, instead of relying on past sales cycles and survey responses, one could see the actual intent of technology buyers?

Luckily for those of us working as analysts at Aberdeen, this kind of intent insight is no longer a “what-if.”

With Aberdeen’s recent acquisition of The Big Willow, we are able to tie extensive buyer intent data to our deep research into technology usage and implementation to gain far superior insight into where technology purchases and usage is headed.

For example, our research into cloud computing has shown some growth in the use of Microsoft’s Azure platform. This, in addition to lots of recent news about increased ways that developers and businesses can use Azure, would suggest that 2019 may be a good year for Azure in 2019. That would be a best guess.

But when we use our intent data, we no longer have to guess. Looking at our current intent data for businesses in the market for cloud solutions, we see that articles and content about Microsoft Azure, how to deploy it, and its benefits and capabilities, are extremely popular among these businesses.

With this information, combined with our already strong research into Azure, it is a pretty safe bet that Azure will be big in 2019.

Of course, this data doesn’t end with the cloud. Our intent research in DevOps not only shows increased interest in agile and continuous delivery, but also many buyers having intent around testing and monitoring tools. And in networking, we see that while trends like converged infrastructure have the hype, many networking buyers are mainly concerned with how to improve the security of their infrastructures.

It’s really pretty simple. One of the best ways to predict what people will do, is to see what they are interested in, where they are showing intent.

With this kind of data, tied to expertise and research, there’s no guessing required when it comes to predictions.