5. Natural-language interfaces are advancing too slowly. Unfortunately, big vendors remain clueless about language-based UIs. Enterprise search is a fiasco. Most single-site Web searches are even worse; in almost every case, they're inferior to just Googling on "search string + site name." Serious natural-language/voice command/ control and navigation should be well established by now, but in fact they're barely a blip on the radar screen, InQuira and Sybase Answers Anywhere notwithstanding.

6. Microsoft Office is a huge question mark. Microsoft Office is at a crossroads, with a mounting open-source challenge and a justified reputation for unpopular feature bloat. Microsoft's main strategy to reverse this trend is to make Office the gateway to database information, rather than just to static documents. Much of the action falls in two areas -- BI and live XML. The first fizzled query-in-Excel effort dates back to about 1993, but there's reason to think it will be different this time. The BI industry is making Excel ever more viable as a core analytics client by delivering reports straight into formula-rich Excel spreadsheets, for example. Or maybe not; after all, those same vendors are trying to undermine Excel by replacing it with more heavyweight budgeting/planning systems. And, as I've noted before, live XML is a great idea in certain niches, such as smart forms or complex contracts, but whether it will ever go mainstream remains to be seen. Interestingly, as we went to press, Microsoft announced that it plans to acquire BI vendor ProClarity.

Curt A. Monash is a consultant in Acton, Mass. You can reach him at curtmonash@monash.com.