(FORTUNE Small Business) – Nostradamus had it easy. He could write cryptic four-line poems and make vague predictions, letting the generations to come debate whether he was a seer or a faker. We here at FSB are held to a higher standard than 16th-century French prophets, and we have to boldly predict the future--and in prose, no less. We interviewed some of the best trend spotters in the business to compile our list of the ten tech trends most likely to affect small business in 2001. We've given each one a reality rating of one to ten to reflect the likelihood of mass adoption.

Nostradamus focused on major catastrophes and the rise of tyrants. It's child's play when compared with high tech, no? Read on for what to expect during the next 12 months, if not 400 years.

Big business markets small business services

Remember the last time you went to the bank? You made a deposit, checked out the loan rates, and signed up for an e-commerce site. What is wrong with this picture?

Here's the deal: Dot-coms offering small business services don't have the money to get your attention. Old-line companies like banks and telcos have small business customers but not enough Web savvy to get their Web business. Let the partnering begin! Bank of America is marketing Biztro.com's Web services. Citibank has a relationship with online bill payment service Paytrust.com. Expect more of these.

The appeal is that businesses could get complete packages, such as an online merchant account and an e-commerce site, from the same company they already work with. The concern is, well, remember when AT&T sold computers? "Problems could arise if these organizations view small business as an afterthought rather than a focus," says Melissa Shore, an analyst with Jupiter Communications. Reality Rating: 9

Wireless drives local commerce

You're shopping and it starts to rain. You enter your location on your cell phone or Palm and are directed to an umbrella shop around the corner, then offered a coupon on the fly.

That's the vision of marrying the Web and wireless devices like cell phones. "Location-specific information that can either be accessed wirelessly in real time or that is synched up with a personal digital assistant (PDA) will have a huge impact on small businesses with physical storefronts," says Kevin Werbach, managing editor of the tech newsletter Release 1.0. "Consumers will be able to find exactly what they're looking for based on where they are."

The obstacles here are significant. The players in this market, such as local guide developer Vindigo and location finders like Go2Online, have just started to sell local ads. Most important, do consumers want to use their devices this way? As Andrew Bartels, a vice president and research leader at Giga Information Group, says, "Why wouldn't I just call?" Reality Rating: 5

Voice over DSL

Reliable phone service, multiple lines, and high-speed Net access at bargain-basement prices--what's not to love? "The DSL space is moving from 'get a high-speed pipe to the Internet' to providing this bundle of services where small businesses can get voice, data, and videoconferencing over DSL all from one provider," says Chris Shipley, executive producer of IDG's DEMO conferences. "It's a great bargain."

DSL still faces the same technology and regulatory issues that have plagued it from the beginning. Access is limited if you're beyond 18,000 feet of the phone company's central office. And it's still frustrating to wrangle with a regional Bell operating company, an upstart DSL provider, and DSL resellers to get service if you qualify. That's not to say demand can't overcome the obstacles, but.... Reality Rating: 4

Project management

If making the most of your time is your New Year's resolution, cheers; this one's for you. Project management solutions, previously only for large organizations, come to small business. Using the Web, you can track projects from beginning to end, ensuring they are done on time and within budget. Read: increased profits. Not just time-management solutions, systems by firms like Metier look at past performance to statistically figure out what types of projects are the most lucrative and determine who does what best.

Giga Information Group senior analyst Margo Visitacion says project management can increase productivity up to 25% but cautions, "It's not a magic bullet, only a way to help execute leadership and communication." Reality Rating: 5

E-commerce infrastructure

Would you build a store without a stockroom or a parking lot? That's basically what happened with e-commerce last year as companies built Web storefronts but no back end to support them. "Ultimately this is all about continuing to lower the barriers to entry for small companies interested in doing even a little business online," says Kneko Burney, a director with Cahners In-Stat Group. Look for startups such as TrueSynergies and Returns-Online to handle fulfillment and returns. And even UPS, with its e-Logistics division, is letting firms rest easy about what happens after customers click the "buy" button. Reality Rating: 9

Business peer-to-peer networks

Substitute the latest Limp Bizkit song with a Word document, and that's the promise of business peer-to-peer. "Napster validates what we've been building," says Ray Ozzie, CEO of the recently launched Groove Networks, which will offer collaborative applications like calendars peer-to-peer. Groove is the most visible of the players hoping to tap into the need for fast and direct information exchange among business users. The issues surrounding peer-to-peer--security, the impact on network performance, and the need for increased processing power--are important but may be overblown, says Werbach of Release 1.0. "Peer-to-peer has the same sec-urity issues that plague any Internet application." Reality Rating: 5

Networking gets easier

Listen to Sun's Scott McNealy, and you know that the network is the computer. But why has the network been such a pain to maintain? With major equipment manufacturers like Intel, IBM, and Sun now marketing simple, limited-use networking devices like the Cobalt Qube, we may see some relief.

Even better, those appliances are finally being equipped with enough built-in smarts to keep the network running hands-free. "Small businesses won't have to invest in or install as much computing infrastructure as they might have done in the past for the same level of functionality," says John Verity, assistant managing editor of ComputerLetter, published by Technologic Partners. Maybe now you can focus on your real job. Reality Rating: 8

Bluetooth

Talk about connections. This short-distance wireless technology will let you quickly share information between your Bluetooth-enabled cell phone, PDA, and laptop. Motorola, Ericsson, and HP have announced plans to ship Bluetooth-enabled devices such as cell phones and modems for the first quarter of 2001.

We'll soon have prod-ucts, but they will be pric-ey. Motorola's Timeport phone, for example, will go for $350. And Bluetooth itself has some quirks that need to be ironed out. "It gets confused if you have a phone, a PDA, and a laptop turned on all at once and are trying to share data between them," says Rob Enderle, a vice president and research leader at Giga Information Group. That can't be good. Reality Rating: 2

B2B purchasing power

Are the barriers coming down for small businesses to participate in B2B? "We'll see B2B come through for small business this year because of the effort by the big guys to bring them to the party," says Burney of Cahners In-Stat. Major players, such as Ariba, Commerce One, and Oracle, are working to enable small manufacturers to connect their systems to larger enterprises already in the electronic marketplace. That will let more small firms participate and procure goods this way, saving money because of the aggregated buying power of the B2B exchange. Reality Rating: 7

Bundled Web services

"Application services will finally gain traction, because businesses will be able to get them in a much more integrated way," says Burney. An emerging class of providers, such as Jamcracker and ePanacea, will custom integrate services that deliver software via the Web, solving the problem of Web-based applications that needed to talk to each other but couldn't. The concern is that the integrators haven't developed the trust to pull this off. "For small business owners the big question may well be, Who the heck is Jamcracker?" says Jupiter's Shore.

One bright spot here is that Intuit and Microsoft recently announced plans to become ASP integrators, focusing first on financial applications and later on collaboration, human resources, and other business management tools. If you don't want ASPs from these guys, Web services will never take off. Reality Rating: 4