[Editor’s Note: This post is part of SiliconANGLE’s “Predictions and Reflections” series. To view this year’s collection, click here. To participate, create an account or log into “TheANGLE” and request to join the group. –mrh / spa]

The other day I posted 2009 – Ken’s Year in Review and promised I’d follow up with this requisite annual blogger’s rite, my look ahead. There may be some bumps in the road and unexpected twists here, so hang on dear reader. Put your tray table in the upright and locked position, raise your seat back and make sure your seatbelt is securely fastened. I’ve never been particularly shy or softspoken about my look at the future, and I probably won’t be now.

Disclaimer: These are my opinions alone. They don’t necessarily reflect the opinions of any employer past or present, my lovely partner Sheryl, the companies named herein, or anyone else on the planet. Your opionions and mileage may vary widely. Cheap shot comments will be tossed into the abyss, but open conversation and debate is always welcome.

Disclaimer 2: This is not only an opinionated post, it’s a long one. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Early in 2009 I predicted it was going to be the year Cisco took a big black eye. I agree, that didn’t happen. Instead they’ve taken a light bruising all year long. 2009 was a year when Cisco excelled at absolutely nothing that mattered in the market in my view. They were vanilla custard and simply didn’t matter in the market. They got off easy, and in 2010 they won’t. I said a black eye in 2009. I’ll predict a savage beating in 2010, the likes of which they’ve never felt before. I bet you’re curious where, aren’t you?

First in unified communications and VoIP space. I’d say Cisco is going to get their lunch eaten by multiple players. The Cisco solution set is pretty decent (Call Manager and the like), although their phones are forgettable. It won’t matter. I think they’ll get beaten repeatedly by Lucent, Asterisk, Mitel, and others. Even IBM, yes IBM, will cause pain for Cisco. 2010 will be the year Cisco learns how much they don’t know about telecommunications. It will be a bitter pill to swallow.

They bought Pure Digital for the Flip and they’re about to get a bunch of hype for the new Flip with built-in WiFi. I give that buzz six weeks and then they’ll take a good old fashioned, bare knuckles ass whuppin from the likes of Kodak’s Zi8 and a handful of others. More importantly, the current generation of cameras built in to mobile phones, notably iPhone and Blackberry, are likely to shift up taking another huge bite out of the whole dedicated camera market.

Then there’s Cisco’s core business – switching and routing. Coupled with some repercussions of the recent Starent acquisition and Juniper getting serious about the market, I expect some big moves in this space. Juniper will play big and strong. The big dog, Cisco, is going to get rocked back on their heels in some major networking deals in 2010. People will start to think about other options more often before simply choosing Cisco.

Oh, and John Chambers, the Rupert Murdoch of networking, will finally move on. I’ve seen his leadership at Cisco as ineffective in recent years and I expect him to move on, flying off with his golden parachute.

Then we have Yahoo. The worn and beleaguered Yahooligans will continue trickling out the door at every opportunity. There’s still a lot of talent at Yahoo and they are ripe for the picking. They don’t have that many execs left from the old days. Jerry Wang’s departure was really good for Yahoo. Replacing him with Carol Bartz was, IMHO, not a good move. Other than trying to prove her balls by swearing, she’s done nothing that I’d expect from a CEO leading a company. She needs to go. I believe in 2010 she’s out the door. She can take the flying monkees with her too.

Of course there’s Microsoft, the Gorgon with more snakes in its head than Medusa. (Yes, the irony of Gorgons being female is intentional, for a reason…read on). I expect more layoffs at MS. Significantly more. Microsoft is still a very fat company, with plenty of trimming to do. In 2010, I think they’ll do some in the right areas. They’ve missed the mark a time or two with cutbacks, and some course corrections will happen this year. OCS will do well, especially against Cisco. Momentum will gain there.

Most importantly, I think Steve Ballmer will depart. He isn’t good for MS. I think many people feel that way, but nobody says it. I expect him to leave MS and land somewhere equally visible. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s somewhere near either Redwood Shores or Pleasanton in California. ‘Nuff said.

Oh, and MS in an effort to prove they’re not evil and soften their image will place a woman in a very visible leadership role, perhaps Ballmers. We should hope it won’t be Carol Bartz, although she certainly seems to cast a flirtatious eye toward Redmond every now and then.

Yes, there is plenty more if you’re still here.

If Microsoft’s a gorgon, Google is a Chimera, breathing fire, part search engine, part cloud service, part telco, part alchemist. (Perhaps an interesting sidenote: The Chimera’s tail ended in a snake’s head. Something to consider.) Google has a multitude of businesses and a serious problem. They have huge opportunity, but some days I wonder if they have the nerve to go for it. Google’s an 800 pound gorilla who seems afraid to rock the boat. Rather, they telegrahp five years in advance that they’re thinking of rocking the boat. I think 2010 will be the year that changes. They have several segments in play right now.

First there’s Google Wave. It’s hit the market with a soft thud, but it’s still in early beta. I think they gave too much hype to something that isn’t going to hit mainstream for at least five years. Then again,  recall when Gmail came out of beta. Wave has potential, but right now it’s simply the geek developers playground. Google Wave is a sandbox. I don’t expect it to be anything but a sandbox for quite some time to come. Until Wave is fully integrated with GoogleTalk, Gmail, GoogleDocs and the rest of the suite, it can only be a playground for geeks and developers, regardless of whether your company can make your own wave or not. Lots of lead time on this concept, so if you haven’t started, you’re not too late. If you have started, you’re way early.

Google Latitude, is an interesting concept. It’s one that I think Google will tie in to mapping at some point. It integrates with Google Maps today. The recent tracking option to remember where you’ve been is clearly a shot across the bow of the GPS market. That’s where Google seems to be headed. I don’t think they grasp the significance of presence, availability and location in one app or they’d have integrated with GoogleTalk. Missed opportunity, and they’ll probably continue to miss and fall behind in location based services in 2010. They’re big and powerful enough they can still recover over the course ot their standard half-decade development cycle, so don’t count them out. Just don’t expect them to deliver a solid LBS solution in 2010.

The biggest opportunity Google has is with Google Voice (formerly Grand Central), perhaps with some integration of the stuff they bought up with the Gizmo acquisition. There’s a problem here, and it’s a Google cultural barrier. They’ve got this "do no evil" image they’d like to protect. They don’t understand that when it comes to investors and profit, there are degrees of evil that your investors and customers will accept. They try, but sometimes a little evil slips into the mix. For Google to make a real play in telecommunications, they have to take the gloves off and get down and dirty in a biting, hair pulling, crotch kicking knife fight with some of the dirtiest fighters in history, the telephone companies. And Google is already the underdog in the eyes of the referees, legislators and the FCC. Because the referees are the cronies and lackeys of the incumbents. I only say that because it’s true, and after thirty years in the industry, I’m pretty sure I’m right.

And now for some highlights.

I think the hot acquisition of the year will be Voxeo, assuming they take the deal. It will be big. I think Voxeo’s worth significantly more than Twitter. I expect someone to make a play for Voxeo that’s well into significant nine figures. And it will be worth it. The deal of the decade for me? Call it a fantasy deal. Let Google step up to the 800 pound gorilla who wants to play hardball and buy Voxeo for $300M, integrate within 120 days and go live and strong with a significant telecommunications solution from top to bottom, enterprise to consumer. They could be the biggest telecom provider in the world in the space of a year if they pulled the right leadership team and strategy together. Will they? Let’s watch. I think not, but they could disrupt the telecom industry more than anyone in history. I’d like to see it. Voxeo’s a company I’d like to work for or with.

Twitter will actually make some money in 2010, but it will be less than expected. And in late 2010, Biz Stone will write his annual blog post on how 2011 will be the year Twitter monetizes and becomes a profitable business. Again.

I’ve said a few times recently that location based services are on the rise. I think Foursquare is going to shake out as a big winner in the space. I recently wrote about Mainstreaming Location Based Services and I expect this white-hot market segment to heat up even more. Foursquare has a Blackberry app in development, with some early beta testers. Sheryl and I aren’t among them, but I’m reaching out to the Foursquare team with some ideas. Suggestions to some startups fall on deaf ears. I don’t think that will be the case at Foursquare. They’re riding on popularity and buzz, not ego. These three guys are going to be very rich, and I think by year-end 2010 they’ll own the LBS space and be growing even stronger. If they make the right moves, Foursquare will be sneaking into mainstream and business use by the end of 2010 and somebody will be looking to acquire Foursquare for a substantial chunk of change. Foursquare is another company I’d like to work with.

I’d like to predict some excitement in the mobile space, but I don’t see it on the horizon. I think there may be another iteration of the iPhone. Rumors are floating. I think it will be an incremental update. I think RIM will continue incrementally updating the Blackberry without a major win in consumer space. I think Nokia will release at least 52 new phones next year, one for each each week, but not blockbuster hits. And the droids still won’t be the ones we’re looking for at the end of 2010 in my view. Oh, and Windows Mobile will still make us WinCE in pain, although I expect Microsoft will try to do something to link it more tightly to Windows 7.

In the industry analyst space, I expect to see a couple of the major firms have less-than-notable years. I think Forrester and Gartner will both have a bit of a rough time. Conversely, I think Frost and Sullivan will have a banner year. I also think it’s going to be a year for independent analysts. Those of us who do this out of passion for the industry, without personal or financial bias, will find ourselves winning more often. That’s good news. I expect some significant highlights here actually.

The Language of 2010
We’ll see some terminology shift in 2010. Just as Gartner removed unified communications from their list of hot topics for 2010, I think we’ll see that phrase start to fade. Unified communications, Software Oriented Architecture (SOA), Software as a Services (SaaS) Communications Enhanced Business Processes (CEBP) and mashup (blech!) all need to fade and be replaced by real expectations (market demand for solutions that work instead of buzzwords). I think we’ll see that start to happen.

Social media is one of the most abused, misused, inaccurate terms ever coined. Most of what we see is social marketing, not social media. In 2010 we’ll see more social, less media. More marketing with marketers starting to call it what it is. They all want the hype, spin and buzz. There will, unfortunately be more chaff, but there will be more meat. As reputable firms beging to figure it out, there will be more overall goodness in this space. But there will be more stupidity too.

In 2010, real expertise will win out and the independent advisors will get some real recognition as the mouthpieces and tools in the industry get noticed for what they are. For example, Sheryl coined the phrase engagement specialist almost two years ago. She and I have talked about the criticality of reciprocity and engagement for a long time. That isn’t fluff any more, and as we survey independent advisors, the value they bring to business is being seen. Businesses understand that old school, whether it’s marketing, PR, mailing lists (spam) or marcoms simply isn’t effective in the world of NOW media.

I think that’s enough, and I didn’t even get started on traditional media. So as a parting shot for this long post, traditional media will continue to decline, but journalism, real journalism will rise in both visibility and integrity. And people like Rupert Murdoch will be the catalysts in the slide of traditional media into the abyss of the dead media pool.

Want more? Drop me a note, leave a comment or send me a tweet.