Legend has it that before IT was even recognized as an industry, Thomas Watson, then Chairman of IBM, stated that the world needed only five computers. Whether he ever said that, we don't know, but his words have been dismissed time and again by anyone who looks around and sees our modern world, where, as Bill Gates once predicted, a computer sits on every office desk and in every home.

Experience tells us that all possible explanations of how we came to where we are in the IT world and the accompanying prognostications about where we are going have innumberable start and end points, any one of which is just as plausible as the next. But those models that shape some aspect of the future are those that ultimately compensate their proponents handsomely. Indeed, this is the key to VC success and the entrepreneurs whose ideas they support.

But, well beyond the simple product ideas that many startups have, there are predictions about the IT industry that encompass everything that has happened from the beginning of data processing to everything that will happen moving forward. This is often the discourse of companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google and one may argue that these companies have shaped the IT industry in their images.

Sapotek also has its own all-encompassing explanation of IT's current path, location and destiny. We think that our point of view matters at least as much as anyone else's and by opening our code, we hope that some folks willl concur with our vision of the world and help to create it.

Our foremost prediction is that users will flock to something that offers the same exact advantages of the desktop computing model coupled with the desirable features of Web applications, while eliminating the disadvantages of both. Whatever your thoughts about the Linux desktop or desktop software, we think that the desktop will become just another service and that this will be of great benefit to all users everywhere.