Each year at this time I look back over the stories that MA has covered during the past 12 months to get a sense of what the most important events were in manufacturing and the world of advanced technology. Of course, many of the subjects we cover don't neatly fit into calendar compartments, but the exercise of taking stock is useful to see what has been accomplished and what will continue to be in our focus in the year ahead. In many ways, MA's coverage over the year now concluding, or any year, is an ongoing conversation about how manufacturers are running their businesses and using technology to improve what they do. Their moods and attitudes -- influenced by the economy, the state of their businesses and events in the technology industry -- affect the tone of this conversation. You could almost plot the rhythm on a line graph. And we do. The sense of renewed confidence about the economy and the prospects for their own businesses that manufacturers expressed in an MA poll released in January of 2005 was an important story for much of the year. Higher levels of confidence trickle down to technology budgets and spending, and that's exactly what we saw happen in technologies ranging from enterprise applications to automation systems. A key conversation topic during 2005 was the integration of systems throughout the enterprise, a perennial topic if there ever was one but one whose importance in a globalized industry is increasingly being recognized. MA surveys showed progress toward integrating plant floor systems with business systems, but also some tangible movement over the past year in tying in PLM and MES. Technology lifecycles, too, played out over the year. The most public manifestation of a shift in technology paradigms occurred in the enterprise applications space when Oracle finally acquired PeopleSoft early in 2005 after an 18-month hostile takeover battle. This shined the spotlight on what is perhaps an even more important shift underway in applications technology -- the emergence of a Web services-based architectural model for applications. Acquisitions in the enterprise applications market continued almost unabated this past year. CRM provider Siebel Systems agreed to be acquired by Oracle. In the supply chain market, i2 Technologies returned to profitability after significant cost cutting, while rival Manugistics continued to struggle. Infor bought Lilly Software and MAPICS, among other acquisitions, and made significant progress in articulating its strategy of assembling vertically-specific capabilities. SSA Global, which finally went public in the spring, emerged as a major player in the market. On the automation front, ABB, Siemens and Invensys installed new chief executives. Battles over intellectual property eased a bit this year, particularly in the RFID market when Symbol and Intermec called a truce over patents, as well as in bar codes when Cognex and others scored an important court decision in a long-running patent case with the Lemelson Foundation. All in all, 2005 has been an extraordinarily interesting year for a manufacturing industry grappling with fundamental market and technology shifts on a global stage that seems to be getting both bigger and smaller every day. How do you think events will unfold in the months ahead? Write to me at Dbrousell@thomaspublishing.com.