Leader: Closure at the end of the calendar year?

Normally as we approach Christmas and the end of the year, the pace eases up in the tech community, certainly in Europe and North America. But this year it feels like there has been plenty happening as December trundles on, much of it neatly wrapping up disputes and sagas that have been going on for months or years. Or so it seems.

The start of this month saw the largest week of merger and acquisition activity for years - since seven days at the height of the tech boom in 2000, in fact. There was the weighty marriage between US mobile operators Nextel and Sprint and Oracle finally getting its way with PeopleSoft, another enterprise software vendor. Just a few days later came the unexpected announcement that Symantec was to purchase Veritas for $13.5bn, the biggest software merger yet, though admittedly not one that can be said to end any period of toing and froing.

In sagas watched more closely by this publication than some others, the council at Swansea settled on Capgemini as its preferred outsourcing partner after months of disputes culminating in IT staff strike action this summer. And this week we heard an ongoing tribunal into compensation for a former Oracle saleswoman who had proven sex discrimination at the company's UK arm had come up with what it deems suitable damages.

But arguably overshadowing all of these developments was yesterday's ruling by a European court against a Microsoft appeal of an earlier decision to make it unbundle its Media Player software from its operating system, Windows XP.

A neat end to the year, then? Not quite.

It is satisfying to feel like a number of loose ends have been tied up but let's not be fooled into thinking we've heard the last of these stories or won't see more like them.

Microsoft's head-to-head with European regulators could well last another three years. This week's development was only about upholding EC antitrust sanctions, not about upholding this year's decision full stop.

The issue of local government and IT outsourcing is likely to continue too. Even if Swansea becomes less of a hot spot - and there are no guarantees from the union representing staff there that will definitely be the case - we have seen discontent elsewhere already, for example in Bradford. This is a sensitive subject, one where employers in the public sector have to tread especially carefully.

Finally we can say with some certainty that there will always be tribunals about unfair treatment at places of employment, with glamorous, highly-paid roles in the financial and legal sectors as well as high-tech attracting disproportionate amounts of scrutiny.

And while it's great to see the Oracle-PeopleSoft deal put to bed - whichever way it was going to go, as long as uncertainty ended - we can be sure there are PeopleSoft customers and staff out there who won't see 2005 as 'business as usual'.

2005 will be another year of tremendous ups and downs - with all the important matters covered on these pages.

The silicon.com daily Leader will return on 4 January 2005.