Heads up for '99

As a gut-wrenching 1998 winds down, let's compare notes about what's on your plates for the new year. What do you see as the fundamental business or technology issues of 1999?

Here's my view in brief. The tsunami we call the Asian flu still has many waves yet to wash across all our shores. Recently, the president of South Korea had a head-banging meeting with executives of the leading chaebol to get those slow-moving conglomerates to act on their billions of dollars in debt and the restructuring they can no longer avoid. In Japan, recent reports say the economy shrunk 2.6 percent this year, a contraction that has created an unprecedented billion-dollar loss at Hitachi and sparked a $250 million cooperative research program between Toshiba and Fujitsu that could be the tip of the iceberg in corporate restructuring for Japan Inc.

No one can predict where all this will lead, but it's clear those who say this industry hit bottom in July and is now poised to snap back are in serious denial.

On the technology front, I suspect the sea change that intellectual property and design reuse are generating will continue to be the top-of-the-stack force shaping your world. The tools aren't all here yet, the ones that exist don't all interoperate and it's not yet understood how best to mix and match the cores designers must leverage to meet cost, time and technology targets. There's a world of work still ahead, and it will alter the shape of the companies doing it.

Finally, as we enter what some pundits call the post-PC world, we need to remember the personal computer is still a highly relevant 100-million-unit business. Much of our industry lives atop the PC market-like Silicon Valley poised above the San Andreas fault-ignoring the threat of earthquake as this giant business lumbers forward, shifts and shudders. Some sort of "age of information appliances" may lie before us, but it will not dawn gently.

Beyond those major signposts, my crystal ball grows cloudy. I'd like to hear about what you see as the fundamental issues ahead for the new year. There's no better guidebook for me than the words of engineers and technology managers in the field.

In the meantime, here's my wish that your new year will be joyous, prosperous and full of creativity, whatever ups or downs 1999 may bring.