It’s all the time a sticky enterprise predicting what’s going to occur in tech, as a result of who is aware of what’s occurring behind the scenes or what’s coming subsequent.

Would you will have thought, as an example, that Salesforce would spend nearly $28 billion to purchase Slack on the finish of 2020? Or that in 2021, Jeff Bezos would step again at Amazon with a domino impact of Andy Jassy shifting into his position, and Adam Selipsky coming again after a stint at Tableau to take Jassy’s previous job working AWS?

I positive didn’t see that coming, and I’m betting most individuals didn’t. The tech world strikes so shortly, it’s typically exhausting to maintain up.

We weren’t utilizing the phrases metaverse and web3 (full with lowercase spelling), after which fairly abruptly in 2021, we have been. In case you instructed me that the blockchain was going to come back again in an enormous method in 2021, or Fb would change its identify to Meta, I might have laughed in your face. But, right here we’re.

So let’s admit that there are issues that we will’t presumably predict, however it appears it’s part of my job to rear again and throw out some predictions. I want to suppose that mine are based mostly on my cautious remark of the world I cowl within the enterprise, relatively than some random musings, but when I’m being trustworthy, it’s most likely a mix.

So with that in thoughts, and the standard caveats, listed here are my predictions for the approaching 12 months:

• Talking of web3, corporations (and particularly governments) will study simply how troublesome it’s to retrofit brittle legacy methods to just accept digital forex. There’ll have to be some type of reckoning to both modernize or let it go in the intervening time, most certainly the latter. Updating methods is difficult and costly, and it’s exhausting to see governments spending the cash to do it to accommodate digital forex, which remains to be in its infancy. Pew lately reported that simply 16% of Individuals have traded, invested or used crypto currencies.
• Whereas we’re at it, despite the fact that the hype is uncontrolled, I’m betting that the majority corporations will proceed to undertake AR/VR slowly within the enterprise in 2022. Simply as up to now earlier than the time period “metaverse” began trending, there can be some experimental dabbling in areas the place it is sensible, however most individuals will notice they don’t need to do their work with VR {hardware} on their face all day. And, it’s additionally costly to create content material.
• With Bret Taylor getting promoted to co-CEO of Salesforce this 12 months, the subsequent logical step is for him to take over as solo CEO, and let Marc Benioff observe Bezos into the chairman’s position, the place he can focus extra on his charity work. Benioff has been the face of the corporate for over 20 years, and he could need to lastly step again from that grinding accountability and revel in his wealth.