On the personnel front, will find a new CEO to replace Jonathan Schwartz, the IDG News Service (a Network World affiliate). "We're torn between the view that he'll be ousted and the view that he'll decide it's just time to go, but either way we don't believe he'll be Sun's CEO at the end of 2009, if he even makes it past the first quarter or so," the news agency posits. "And Sun will cease to exist in its current incarnation, perhaps being part of a blockbuster acquisition, perhaps going private."

The IDG News Service also predicts that Time Warner will unload America Online, "either by spinning it off as a separate company, selling it, or using it as the basis of a joint venture formed with another company."

Other acquisition targets could include management vendors and , which are becoming increasingly attractive to software vendors such as , and SAP that need to fill out their respective management and automation offerings.

"Neither [BMC nor CA] wants to be acquired, but they continue to become more attractive morsels to the likes of Microsoft, which has no choice with its virtualization push to take on a bigger role," says Glenn O'Donnell, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. 

Through all the vendor shuffling and market machinations, one thing will remain constant in 2009: the continued assault from all kinds of malware and cybercrime activity.