The technology landscape is about to shift in a huge way. You have already seen the rise of Apple and Facebook over the last few years to be the banner companies for the future of technology, but what’s next? I wanted to take some time and put down some predictions for the next two to five years. I’ve written other posts like this before and it’s awesome to come back to them in a year, and see the score per say.

Gone are the days of consumers accepting long software installations, viruses, boot up times, bugs, crashes, and complicated software that requires a manual. Gone are the days of ugly user experiences that don’t engage them. We have arrived in the future. The future is all about speed, elegant easy to use software, and learnable user interfaces that make you tell your friends “You have to try this application, it rocks!”.

Wouldn’t it be cool if we knew what was going to happen in the next two to three years? Here’s my two cents.

Windows on Every Device

To say Microsoft missed the boat on the Slate/iPad devices is wrong in a sense. They knew Apple had a winner with the iPad. In fact Bill Gates himself was the strongest proponent of Tablet PC’s, a laptop with a pen that had no keyboard or in some cases have a convertible laptop that would transform to a tablet.  They knew these kinds of devices where the future. They just wanted to make a further leap.

They wanted to build a world where one operating system ran on every device. With Microsoft’s latest announcements of Windows 8 taking the Windows Phone “Metro” user interface, and XBOX 360 taking the same interface, your start to see that Microsoft is indeed intending on having Windows run every device: Desktop, Phone, Slate, Surface, and XBOX. And how will people write applications for Windows 8? More on that later. 

By having Windows “Core” on every device, you enable things like write once, run everywhere.  You enable users to use the same user interface across multiple types of hardware.  Microsoft is even embedding adaptive user interface technologies that will turn on or off various features of the operating system depending on your hardware.

Apple iOS on Every Device

The problem with Microsoft’s strategy is it’s taken them almost three years to execute on this strategy and Apple has figure it out. Apple is not afraid to copy Microsoft. Just look at the announcements made yesterday at WWDC 2011. Apple copied nearly all the innovations in the Windows Phone 7. The problem this poses to Microsoft? Apple is doing it faster.

If you missed the Apple Keynote yesterday at the WWDC, let me summarize it for you. iPhone, iPad, Laptop, and Desktop will all run the same OS. With the next OSX being released in July, you will see a lot of this work already coming to light.

iPhone and iPad Customers Switch to Apple Laptops and Desktops

My mom loves her iPhone. She stays connected with my family and my crazy travel schedule, she gets on facebook, she receives text messages. She loves it. Her next gift? An iPad. An interface she is already used to using. Next to zero learning curve. When (and if), she needs a desktop computer with a keyboard and mouse to send emails and word process more effectively, It will probably save me a TON of time to get her an Apple Desktop or Laptop. I won’t need to teach her anything new as long as the interface is similar! Not only that but I don’t have to install programs, updates, or worry about viruses.

Microsoft Embraces Open Source and Open Web

Microsoft still has a massive advantage in the sense that Windows supports so many different hardware devices and configurations. As long as they can still provide that huge economy for companies like Acer, HP, Dell, and more to create machines, they are in business. The problem is the main reason Windows won the Desktop and Laptop war was they had all the developers writing applications for Windows. If you wanted the coolest applications, the most variety, you had to have a Windows Machine. How can Microsoft get the awesome applications again?

Microsoft will have to focus on pushing HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript for building applications that don’t rely on any specific operating system to function. This is why Microsoft will make HTML5 a first class citizen for developing rich applications for Windows 8 at their BUILD conference September 12th through 15th.  They will also have to re-engineer their popular and world class development tools like Visual Studio, Expression Studio, and more to work seamlessly with HTML5.

Apple Becomes Cloud Leader

Apple made a huge announcement yesterday that most missed: We are going to do the cloud right. People will go to the cloud, but not even worry that it’s there. This approach of just keeping it simple and easy is going to work and payoff huge for Apple. Why did the iPad take off and the Tablet PC fail?  iPad doesn’t make you think!  Device turns on in a second.  Battery lasts a week to a month.  Applications install in one click, uninstall in one click.  Consumers are passed the days of doing all the hard work to enjoy a great user experience.  They don’t want to spend an hour setting up and configuring “the cloud”.

iCloud may not be that profitable from a consumer side short term, but what excites me is when Enterprises decide they want to deploy iPads and MacBook Laptops to the Enterprise and Apple says… “You don’t need servers by the way. You don’t need Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, Blades, Firewalls, Switches, and Load Balancers. All you need is to pay Apple $100,000 a year for iCloud for Enterprise and your set”.

We may be a ways away still from this, but it’s less than 5 years away from starting. This should worry Microsoft… A LOT.

Apple Begins to Encroach on Microsoft’s Enterprise “Turf”

So with the consumer battle being won by Apple, and Apple’s stock and Market Cap soaring to 500 billion dollars, the next step is to win the enterprise customers. And just as the game was changed with iPhones and iPads, Apple will not try and fight Microsoft with a great Exchange clone, SharePoint clone, and more. Not at all. Apple is planning on winning the enterprise with cloud services, and cloud applications.

Facebook Becomes a Platform and “Web OS”

You’ll notice that Apples strategy with Microsoft is to basically dismiss, ignore, and make fun of them. Apples strategy with Facebook is to flat out ignore them. Apple is definitely not about to help them because they see Facebook as a huge threat to their iOS Platform. Facebook is in essence positioning itself as the social operating system, and the next evolution of a closed ecosystem. Similar to iOS.

Some people may have been shocked to see Apple support Twitter in their devices. I wasn’t at all. They had to support social integration, but they couldn’t support facebook and drive customers to their closed system. The other thing people forget is the facebook and Microsoft partnership.  Facebook’s email service, automatic tagging of pictures, notifications, groups, installing applications.  If Mark was to let you in on his biggest secret, it is he knows what many don’t:  The next big operating system will live completely in the cloud, and be a “social” operating system.

Netflix Becomes the New Movie and Television Studio 2.0

And of course we can’t forget Netflix, vanquisher of the mighty Blockbuster Video. If you don’t know the whole story, you can get the inside scoop at Bloomberg Game Changers. So now that Netflix is the leader in Movie and Television broadcasting over the internet, what’s the next step? Creating content that is only available on the Netflix content delivery network. XBOX had Halo. Nintendo had Mario. Apple had Angry Birds and now iCloud and iMessage. BlackBerry had BBM. Netflix will have Netflix only content.

Microsoft and Apple Launch Television and Movie

This is a natural shift as well. In fact Microsoft has made huge inroads in this since the 90’s. MSNBC and even back in the day of “The Microsoft Network”, Microsoft has always wanted to be in the television and movie business. By having the XBOX in over 50 million households, Microsoft is positioned to be the next big “cable” network. Apple is also in a great position to make the leap.

The leap that needs to be made is going from simply On Demand programming, to scheduled live programming. While being able to watch television whenever I want is great, there is still that social element that is missing when you are watching something at any time. One of these three companies will make this leap, and the others will follow.

Surface Computing Becomes Mainstream

Imagine a world where any surface, is a computer. The desk when you at Abercrombie. Walking in a shopping mall. At a bank. Forget about the “Surface 2.0” form factor. Microsoft is putting this out there simply to perfect the software. Over the next few years as the hardware gets cheaper and cheaper, you will see interactive LCD screens everywhere. By the time my three year old son is in junior high, I fully expect his desks to be surface enabled desks. Education, Healthcare, it’s all about to change, and Microsoft Surface software is positioned to be the leading technology to enable these possibilities.

Some Final Thoughts

As most of you know, I am a Microsoft MVP and I love the company. A company full of brilliant minds and amazing talents

At the end of the day I think Wayne Gretzky said it best. “Skate where the puck is going, not where it is.” I think to some degree Microsoft and Apple are both doing this. The problem, and what’s missing from this quote is “And if you have two skaters that are skating to where it’s going to be, he who skates faster, will get the puck!”