Gartner has highlighted 10 key predictions of events and developments that will affect IT and business in 2008 and beyond. The predictions highlight areas where executives and IT professionals need to take action in 2008. The full impact of these trends may not appear this year, but executives need to act now so that they can exploit the trends for their competitive advantage.

These predictions are selected from more than 100 predictions that Gartner presents and reviews every year. These predictions focus on general technology areas rather than on specific industries or roles.

The United States, Sweden, and Japan topped a new ranking that measures how well countries use telecommunications technologies–networks, cell phones, and computers–to boost their social and economic prosperity.

Connectivity Scorecard, created by London Business School professor Leonard Waverman and published on Wednesday, measured countries on about 30 indicators, including usage of communications technology.

Microsoft said on Tuesday that its Visual Studio 2008 IDE is now widely available. The tool set was released to Microsoft Developer Network subscribers in November. It is now available to volume licensing and retail customers, the company said in a blog posting.

It includes a new version of the .NET framework, version 3.5, which is aimed at taking advantage of two new subsystems Microsoft included in Windows Vista–WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) and WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation). WCF is for building service-oriented applications, while WPF is for creating more dynamic user interfaces. Microsoft also built Visual Studio 2008 with the idea of making it easier for developers to create cross-platform applications.

Windows Vista’s one-year anniversary is Wednesday. Microsoft released the software to everybody on Jan. 30, 2007. A day earlier, Microsoft held a launch gala for Vista and Office 2007 in New York.

In this post, Microsoft Watch’s Joe Wilcox scores how well Vista has done in 12 areas since its real launch 12 months ago. Microsoft also launched Vista on Nov. 30, 2006. But the release that matters–when businesses or consumers could buy PCs–happened two months later.

After its first attempt to have Office Open XML (OOXML) approved as an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard failed in September, the software giant has spared no expense to ensure that it succeeds at the ballot resolution meeting in February. Microsoft has hosted four conference calls a week with national standards bodies, and recently invited international press to a conference close to its Redmond, Wash., headquarters to set the record straight on the OOXML issue.

Microsoft has admitted that another of its products is at risk from a critical bug patched nearly three weeks ago.

Windows Home Server, the company’s newest operating system, is also at risk to the vulnerabilities spelled out by the MS08-001security bulletin, according to a Friday update. The advisory, first issued on 8 January–and then fingered by researchers as the month’s most pressing–was revised Wednesday, when Microsoft announced that Windows Small Business Server was at risk. Neither Windows Home Server or Small Business Server had been among the versions mentioned in the original bulletin.

The Chinese Year of the Rat begins next week. In the cyberunderground, it is already shaping up to be the Year of the Clever Rat, as crooks scurry to perfect ways to steal data and commit fraud.

One pioneering gang is taking over home network routers instead of PC hard drives, a sneakier way to hijack online accounts. Another has perfected a way to use compromised PCs to repeatedly click on Internet ads to generate ad payments to the crooks.

Phishing specialists are putting finer touches on scams to trick people into divulging sensitive personal data on fake Web pages. Meanwhile, top-level crime rings are getting stealthier and more efficient at herding millions of compromised PCs, referred to as bots, into networks that they deploy to steal data, commit extortion and spread spam.

Technically, Vista is pure misery. It eats system resources like an elephant does peanuts, Windows applications break and its so-called improved security is a joke. I know it. You know it. Even Microsoft’s most devoted yes-men know it–although they won’t admit it–and perhaps Microsoft knows it as well.

What else can explain why Microsoft is now leaking news about Windows 7, the next version of Windows? Oh, officially Vista SP 1 is still the big upcoming news, although I think most businesses are actually more interested in XP SP 3. The simple truth is that no matter how Microsoft and its partners like CDW spin it, Vista is not being picked up by corporate users. Even Bill Gates’ vaunted 100 million Vista users number should be taken with a large–very large–grain of salt.

Microsoft’s strong second-quarter financial results surprised not only analysts, but also the company’s own executives by coming in $300 million above the high end of their forecasts.

Microsoft also reported Jan. 24 a 30 percent rise in revenue, to a record $16.37 billion, in its fiscal quarter that ended in December, on the back of what company officials said were "robust holiday sales and enterprise demand."

That success was in no small part due to hefty ongoing sales of Office 2007 as well as strong sales of Office for Mac, thanks to retail promotions, Chris Swenson, an analyst with the NPD Group, told eWEEK.

Although the adoption of Windows Vista may be lagging behind Microsoft’s expectations, there is no doubt that people will be moving eventually to this powerful platform. Making the switch can be easier with a little preparation.

A major roadblock to adoption in the minds of IT mangers is the lack of a service pack. This will soon be resolved as Microsoft releases SP1 in early 2008. Another is the lack of application compatibility, but there are some specific changes that affect how applications work on this new environment.