Anyone and their brother, sister, mother, and second cousin can make bold predictions. Gartner does it constantly and is proved wrong about 80% of the time. What a job, eh? Get things wrong most of the time and still be considered a trusted source for information. I think a lot of Gartner employees must've started down the weather forecasting path before deciding the tech industry was a much easier direction.

I've been asked recently about my thoughts on what I expect from Microsoft and the tech industry in general for 2015. And, while I do have my own bold predictions that will be posted later on this month, I think there's value in hearing what we actually know will happen. Plus, I like to be right.

So, here's a stab at some more obvious things that are sure to happen in 2015. You can count on these.

New Azure Products and Updates Will Release

Uh…duh.

Just last week, no less than 20 new Azure products and updates were rolled out. You might have read about some of them, bits and pieces detailed here and there. I'm just guessing here, but last week could have set the record for Azure releases. Azure sees new releases weekly and Microsoft will continue the cadence throughout 2015.

Azure Services Will Go Down – Many Times

It's the Cloud, folks.

As much as we'd all like to think that the Cloud will ever be a stable solution, there's just too many variables that say it never will be. Until Microsoft can channel Tesla and develop an Azure weather service to turn storms on and off, Azure will be as reliable as a Gartner prediction.

Microsoft will release botched updates

Most assuredly.

How do you fix something that is so utterly broken? If 2014 is any indication, the first part of 2015 is going to be a horrible time for those involved in the patching process, as it seems Microsoft's update releases are getting steadily worse. Name the last time there was a monthly patching cycle where an update wasn't reported to cause customer downtime. Better yet, name the last month you can remember when Microsoft didn't have to recall and fix an update.

The Curious Will Attend MS Ignite

Curiosity killed the cat.

Microsoft is in a unique position for it's first-ever MS Ignite conference (happening in Chicago, May 4-8, 2015) in that the event is brand new. Well, sort of. Last year, Microsoft attempted to merge the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) into TechEd 2014 without success. This year, the company will try to merge 6 conferences into one. The unfortunate thing is that the attendees from the additional 5 conferences being subsumed into the collective aren't totally privy to last year's attempt. The experience was so bad, MMS'ers have branched out and started their own conferences. So, Microsoft has one more shot at this.

New Windows 10 Builds Will Break Things

The beta of the beta of the beta is your friend.

Almost daily I hear from folks who complain that Windows 10 Technical Preview isn't working, is crashing, or has caused some critical app to stop working. If rumors are true, a polished Windows 10 will not release to the public until the latter half of the 2015 calendar year. So, if a new beta build releases each month (Windows 10 *is* beta, btw), you can expect another 8-9 months of problems. Best practice? Do like Paul and install builds to a VM and not a production machine.

Funny enough…with all the negative feedback around the latest Windows 10 Build, I've heard from many over the past few weeks that are actually now considering a move to Windows 8.1. Windows 10 is starting to scare people into Windows 8.1 submission. Imagine that. Microsoft couldn't have planned it any better.

Have some "uh…duh" predictions of your own?  Let me know on Twitter or in the comments.