If I'm not mistaking, about a week ago, we stepped into yet another new year. 2009 already... For me personally, a year with some "important" changes, as I'll be 30 years old this year (in fact, in little over a week - January 16th - I won't be 2.9, I'll become 3.0).
Not only for me it's a big year. Worldwide, we are feeling the impact that the financial crisis is bringing. More and more companies are firing employees or aren't investing as much anymore as they used to. In IT, my business of course (and probably yours as well since you're reading this blogpost), up until now, the impact isn't that big - yet. At least, where I'm living (Belgium - Europe). Companies will urge people to be as efficient as possible. Every bit helps in getting more done in less time and thus for less money. I'm anxious to see where we'll be in a year from now - hopefully the situation will be better by that time.
Microsoft also faces a busy year. It's a release year, with big new releases of Visual Studio, C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET... coming up in the developer tools and languages. But also a new version of Windows, Windows 7 is on the horizon (with a first public beta coming out any minute now hopefully). And least we forget Office 14. Note the fact that Microsoft is skipping V13.0.
Windows 7 will be the successor of the much troubled Vista. While the beta isn't really here yet, a version was leaked on torrent networks, which was for once perhaps a good thing. The first reports of this unsupported version were really positive: it proves, even already in this version, to be a stable product that is faster than Vista. While I personally never had much troubles with Vista, it has never been a public favorite. Microsoft is really planning on not making the same mistakes with 7 and it looks like a promising product. µ
Office 14 didn't really get all that much attention yet. At PDC, Microsoft showed the first version of the web-based (Silverlight) versions of the products. While this will prove helpful for everyone working with Office, it's particularly interesting to see whether this will help people in under-developed countries in accessing more technology.
For developers, 2009 will be one of the most exciting years. First, as mentioned, Visual Studio 2010 is coming up. This new version of the IDE will be the biggest overhaul the product has ever known. Making developers love Visual Studio again is the driving goal for 2010. Multi-monitor support, a WPF interface, a faster environment...All of these make it hard to wait for the new release to arrive.
A new version of C#, version 4.0 as well as VB.NET, VB10, will see the daylight. I have been playing and writing on C# 4.0 already and it has some interesting developments, mainly around dynamic programming. The changes however aren't as big as the introduction of version 3. ASP.NET will also be upped a version number, also towards 4.0. If you followed the PDC, you might have seen that the amount of sessions on ASP.NET was really small. ASP.NET has matured, and the changes in this version are mainly focused on integration with other technologies, for example JQuery.
Silverlight however, will keep on growing. While the adoption isn't where it should be yet (at 100% 
), it's getting there. Customers are getting to know it, more and more developers build interest into it. At Mix, some exciting new stuff should be announced related to Silverlight to keep us all busy! If you need investing in a learning a new technology, take a look at Silverlight for sure.
WPF, another still recent technology, will keep on rising hopefully. The adoption of this platform is still too low, mainly because it's higher learning curve. Microsoft has done good things with it since it's release like improving its performance, but more is needed I reckon.
Finally, another thing that will really take off this year is the whole Cloud-thing. Windows Azure, announced at PDC also, is the platform for hosting applications in the cloud.
Azure will have many advantages. Take for example a small startup, who need investing in infrastructure - up until now that is. The requirements are often unknown up front and making wrong decisions can be costly. Azure is the solution here since it scales perfectly to match the needs of the startup.
On the other side, there's still a change of mindset needed in this space. While you stay in control of your apps, you aren't really in control, you're handing over your applications to Microsoft (and not only apps, but also storage...). It will be interesting to see how fast people will be migrating to the new platform.
I hope this piece gave you some insights in the upcoming stuff in the new year. Please comment if you don't agree with my opinions!